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Xbox 360 Homebrew Finally Arrives
Busshy writes "Tmbinc has posted a video showing Snes 9X as the first homebrew for the Xbox 360. This coincides with the upcoming release of the Free60 project, which will turn the 360 into the most powerful console for homebrew to date, hopefully with emulators for the Dreamcast, Gamecube, PS2, Xbox and possibly even the Wii."
If the Xbox360 gets Wii emulation then MS may have an incentive not to stop homebrew on it as (obviously) it will hurt one of their competitors.
Now, if only Wii's gaming library didn't suck for most gamers. (And mods, no, I'm not trolling--the only console I own is the Wii, and I'm disappointed).
Took a look at the Free60 Wiki. Getting a 360 to run homebrew is a rather painful and involved process. By comparison, softmodding a wii is childs play.
I saw this homebrew breakthrough earlier today, I was excited until I noticed the very important message to not update the console -- too late, I already did that a week ago (generally, I update because it's usually a good idea). Unfortunate, but I suspect I'm not the only one with the same misfortune.
Why is the PS3 left out of the list? You can run homebrew software on it by default.
Because the ability to run unsigned code directly on the hardware (e.g. not sandboxed as a user of the OS) is both great for homebrew development and the fundamental building block of a pure software loader for pirated games, this development is going to scare the hell out of the bean counters and the department heads. They're going to have to deploy most (if not all) of the tricks left in their bag of countermeasures, otherwise inside of a year the 360 will end up like the Wii and the Xbox 1 - completely and utterly cracked open for piracy.
As the Free60 homepage has already noted, MS has deployed an update to the first stage of the bootloader, something they've never done before. Such an update is risky because if it fails there is no chance for recovery, it's the equivalent of failing at a BIOS update on a PC. However it's also an effect update; it blocks the only publicly known low-level security hole in the 360, so systems with the new bootloader are fully locked down. Adding even more fuel to the fire is that this was probably one of Microsoft's last unused countermeasures, as no one in the 360 hacking community is immediately aware of any other similar countermeasures. MS may have just played their trump card as far as DRM on the 360 is concerned.
Anyhow, the point of all of this is that this is an excellent and quite scary example of increasingly improved DRM systems being deployed. It's taken just shy of 4 years to crack open the 360 to just this point, and MS has shown the ability to lock it back down with a single update*, one that they'll undoubtedly bake in to new games too in order to snuff out as many vulnerable 360s as possible. In spite of the fact that no DRM system thus far is perfect, this is clear example of where the future of DRM lies: it's going to get better.
Pay close attention to what happens to the 360, because where Microsoft succeeds with DRM is going to show up in other systems. The Zune, the iPhone, the next generation of consoles, cable set top boxes, etc, are all looking for the holy grail of DRM. And every time they fail, they get a little bit closer. With enough failures under their belts, one of these days they may no longer fail.
* The lack of the ability to fully update the bootloader is the biggest flaw in the Xbox1 and Wii. In the case of the Wii, boot1 has a signing bug and is hardcoded - any system with the faulty boot1 can ultimately be cracked by replacing boot2 with a vulnerable loader, such as BootMii
I wonder if this update is why my 360 has started to RRoD in the last few days?
I got one of the first ones available in the UK and it's been fine until now. On friday it started to RRoD pretty much on alternate days, with no way to persuade it not to except leaving it. A dodgy, rushed low-level code update could explain its behaviour....
Yeah, homebrew, if your 360 isn't one of the 54% of 360s that have broken, with a long repair turnaround and substandard customer service.
(yes, I am aware that the survey isn't very robust, but still...)
the point of all of this is that this is an excellent and quite scary example of increasingly improved DRM systems being deployed. It's taken just shy of 4 years to crack open the 360 to just this point
Not being in the scene I could be widely misinformed on this, but I believe that all this did was close off a software exploit available to anyone with an unmodified 360. It did nothing to any hardware modchips.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Quick note: For RRoD's, Microsoft has extended the warranty to 3 years. Free shipping both ways, and they give you a full one-year warranty to boot. All you need is the serial number on the unit.
Unfortunately I got mine about six months too early for that to be of any use to me now. But for others it may be useful.
You DO realize that pirated xbox360 games have been around since nearly the beginning right? It involved a little firmware patching to the DVD-ROM drive, and then a burned game would work just fine on the xbox360 as if it was the original. Heck, even Xbox Live can work, so you get all your achievements and multiplayer.
How do you think all those people got caught with pre-release copies of games and subsequently banned from Xbox Live?
While running unsigned code is a good thing (and it probably took this long because Microsoft offered a sanctioned method of homebrew), it probably won't be a big piracy deal. Games will start using new APIs that require updates, and people will get sick of single player soon enough because Xbox Live requires people to update to the latest version. At best, you'll have local multiplayer, which probably works until your friends want to bring over their live profiles. The current generation of consoles (except for the most part the Wii) have stronger online multiplayer components.
That's really why the Wii was more or less the first to be broken, followed a long while by the Xbox360, and then soon the PS3. All the homebrewers broke the Wii because they wanted to run their code on it. Microsoft offered a method, so those people went away and did that, and Sony has Linux, again a sanctioned homebrew method. Microsoft's cost money, so there was a bit of effort to those wanting a free solution, while Sony's doesn't, which means those wanting homebrew on the PS3 outside of Linux will be the few wanting to take advantage of the GPU.
Nope. A bad bootloader replacement would be an instant 100% bricking. Besides, the RRoD has a specific meaning - something to do with the gfx controller I believe. You just got unlucky - my xbox360 died a couple of weeks ago after intermittently failing to start up. If you got one of the first ones available it means you were like me - you got one of the ultra-high-failure-rate models. DRM isn't to blame here, bad manufacturing/design is.
Well then I guess it is a good news that the newest PS3 "slim" will no longer support Linux.
I wonder why they are doing it, and I wonder if they'll even disable that on the older systems with an update, but nevermind this.
The important thing is that now the hackers will have a good reason to start trying more seriously.