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Microsoft Banning 360 Firmware Modders?
arcon5 writes "After several months of silence it was more or less accepted that Microsoft wasn't going to do anything about the firmware hacks that allow Xbox 360s to play backups. Rather surprising, considering the 'inventor' of the hack confirmed in March already that the mods are easily detectable, and the reports that piracy is running rampant in countries like China. It appears that Microsoft is finally taking action against them though, although they may be hitting the wrong persons." Best part of that article is the firmware chip encased in epoxy.
How naive must someone be to think that silence on the part of a corporation equates to a tacit approval for people to circumvent a piece of hardware's embedded security system in order to run pirated copies of software?
Uhh...no...physical switch chips can not be detected as long as they are off. I'm assuming your speaking of the original Xbox modchips here. Even software switch chips can't be detected on it as long as they are done right. The problem people ran into on the original Xbox was that they would initially sign onto Live with the stock HD, play for a while, put a chip in, switch the HD, and after a while MS began looking at HD serials. You were usually ok if you were never on Live before switching the HD, but many went on with a stock driver first, then switched their drive. I personally prefer the old Xbox since pirates could only play with legitimate games on Live and you could do a hellll of allot more with it than you can with the 360.
This sucks for the two of you who ACTUALLY WOULD use this to back a game up (understandable, they're pricey at $60 a pop). However, the mass majority of people interested in this hack are pirates who don't want to pay for games. MS is still selling these machines at a hefty loss, so I can't say I blame them for this one.
Which is not to mention that even if the MAC address never hit the wire as part of the protocol, MS could easily pass it as part of the conversation that goes on when connecting to XBox Live (just like I assume they also pass the serial number, dashboard version, etc).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
In many cases you are completely wrong. Market share is the percentage of people using a product. Even if they have no paid for it, the market share of users is extremely valuable. Otherwise Linux would have virtually no market share whatsoever. Nor would any other open source product, which is completely wrong.
And another point, dollars spent is a completely bogus way to look at market share as well. Ferrari and Lambourgini would have much larger market shares if dollars spent affected the market share.
If you want to get really picky here, I would put forth the idea that total time played is an very good indication of the popularity (or market share) of a game. This is not something that a board room group would really care about. But I find it much more interesting than the number of units sold per retail outlet between Nov 1 and Dec 31.
I'd like to also put forth the idea that it would probably be a great idea for a company to give a game away for free (perhaps their own pirated copy even) that was extremely popular to get people to buy their console. Once you get people buying your console, they will likely buy more games. As the original poster claims, get them hooked before you start turning the screws. Of course this would work better for a company like Nintendo that actually makes money on the sale of their console, instead of loosing money on each one, and trying to make up for that loss with game royalties, like Microsoft does.
Definitions can be very subjective things.