Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Disconnects Modded Xbox Users
S-4'N3 writes "The BBC reports that Microsoft has disconnected approximately 600,000 Xbox users from Xbox Live because the devices they are using have been modified, either with software or with new chips, to play pirated games. 'Microsoft confirmed that it had banned a "small percentage" of the 20 million Xbox Live users worldwide.
Microsoft said that modifying an Xbox 360 console 'violates' the service's 'terms of use' and would result in a player being disconnected.'"
Apparently some people have gone as far as calling death threats to a "Director of Policy and Enforcement for Xbox LIVE" and his wife (theres also irc logs where he came to say it on #360banned)
There has been modded xbox360 bans before too, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to people when they do get banned. And at least it keeps the cheaters off games.
By "disconnecting" it means banning from playing in the "live" online network (which you must pay to play anyway).
It is still possible to play offline games with banned xboxs
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Listen, I hate Microsoft. I think the people who run Microsoft are criminals. I cannot for the life of me believe I'm about to say this:
You buy an XBox 360, you can do whatever you want with it. Mod it to your heart's content.
But the Live network belongs to Microsoft. They have a right to disconnect you if they want.
Now excuse me while I find someone to fulfill my user name.
This should mean I'll never lose to some 12 year old in Halo or CoD again, cause I'm sure they were all modding. Yep, that's definitely it.
600,000 of 20,000,000
there are some who would call this "three percent"
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
The great thing about online console play (the only thing, really, that it has over PCs) is their closed nature. It's much, much harder to cheat on a console than on a PC game. Don't get me wrong. I fully support their right to mod their own hardware. But I don't want to play them online.
I took it into a shop [the Xbox], there was a guy back there and I asked him and he did it for me [chipped it]. He charged £75 to get it chipped but at the end of the day I said to myself I'll pay £75 to get it chipped, after two games I've paid the money back.
I've probably saved about £600 and I've copied roughly 30 or 40 games. A lot of them I've downloaded or I've taken off friends that have downloaded themselves.
So at what point do you put two and two together and realize that getting kicked off playing online is not such a bad thing if you've saved £600? Is there really any wonder why XBox Live wants to deny you service? How exactly do you maintain outrage at being banned?
His sob story was going pretty good until he got up to those last paragraphs of admission and even saying he'd never do it again (implying he is wrong).
My work here is dung.
Bought a 3rd-party X-box over 6 months ago. I got a second when it RROD'ed, and noticed that the other couldn't play some games that my original could. I'm guessing that the original has a non-original DVD drive, and that those games are well-silkscreened copies, as they never did come with a case the way the Halo game had when I got the system...
So I wonder if when I turn that sucker on now (it's been solder-reballed which fixed the RROD) whether it will be permabanned from XBL. Mind you the only time I really log on to XBL is when playing video files etc, because it appears for some rather idiotic reason it tied the Codec downloads to your account rather than an overall system update. I suppose I'll just have to run it unplugged from the network.
Overall I wouldn't have a problem with not using the machine on XBL (I don't really do so anyways), but the fact that updates/codecs/etc are tied in there makes it a pain in the ass.
There are some very funny, outraged posts regarding this in the official xbox live forums. Microsoft has also banned players for a number of other offenses, including obscenity and racism, and these posts are great. My favorite: http://forums.xbox.com/29600400/ShowPost.aspx#29600400
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Hitler is going to be pissed!
PISSED!
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
This three percent is one helluava mighty pirating engine ain't it? According to Microsoft, it's this three percent that's been the cause of the falling profits all this time. Now that they have been eliminated from being able to purchase stuff from Live... er.... I mean, uh.... now that they've been ejected.... No....
Can we just jump to the "Profit" step now, quick-like?
Edith Keeler Must Die
what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
"enough" is not determined by the buyer. You don't go into a store and argue with the cashier - at least not in most western economies - that the price is too much. You either buy it or you don't.
If Microsoft decides their price is too high and people actually can't afford it and that's why their sales are going down, maybe they'll lower the prices. As it is, people can afford it, Microsoft is making money, and there is little incentive for game publishers to lower their prices.
It's like asking an IT guy to lower his price because, while I and many others can afford his service, I think it's too expensive. You know how you solve that one? You don't hire him to do the work in the first place. I guess with entertainment it's different... because we are entitled to cheap entertainment - "cheap" being defined not by what we can afford or supply/demand but by what we feel like paying - at the expense of these evil corporations...
Mmm, how was it he didn't pay?
You mean other than the part where he says he didn't buy the games and just copied them because he felt he was owed them?
guess he paid for the Xbox, he paid money to the guy for 'chipping' his box, and he paid for the Xbox-live service.. what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
If one wants to play a game, one has to buy it. If one can not afford to pay for the game doesn't mean you are allowed to copy it. One is not entitled to the work of another for free just because someone wants it.
Why would they want to sell more 360s? Don't they still lose money on each one? My understanding was that they did, but made it up on the games and such. Buying an extra 360 isn't going to cause a user to buy more copies of the game, so why would they be trying to encourage more 360 sales that cut into their bottom line?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
99.9% of them are people who want to play free games, or cheat on games. People who cheat on games ruin the experience for everybody else. Most modded Xboxes were modded by some guy at a games store, anyway, and that guy charged for it, it's not like these guys went through the effort of modding it themselves... they just paid some goon so they could steal games.
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it. Slashdot pretends this group is the larger percentage, but Slashdot is wrong about a good many things.
Comment of the year
You really think so? The "backups" that most people use in their modded XBoxes are backups from some guy on a torrent site who himself probably only rented the game. How are these people their best customers? They probably play more games and have higher gamer scores, and might even pay for XBox Live Gold, but MS still isn't making as much from them as someone who buys only a few games a year.
You don't go into a store and argue with the cashier - at least not in most western economies - that the price is too much. You either buy it or you don't.
I do it all the time. I just don't expect to leave with it unless the cashier and I agree on the price and I pay it.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Cheaters are not their concern (at least, it certainly doesn't seem to be). Microsoft's best customers are not so much the people that buy their consoles - it's the people that buy games for their consoles. The argument here is that people are modding their xboxes to sidestep Microsoft's DRM protection in order to play "backup" games. The people doing this are not particularly interested in creatively modding their xbox so much as being able to (via someone else's creative work) download torrented disc images, burn them to dvd, and play them on their xboxes.
The only problem with this approach is that some (undoubtedly small) percentage of users who are in fact doing creative things by modding their xbox could also fall victim to being a false positive from whatever method Microsoft is using to identify the modders.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
'Cause modding hardware you own should be illegal!
No, but violating the terms of use you agreed to buy using their service means they are perfectly justified in banning you from that service when you break the rules.
The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
I really cannot see how they are Microsoft's best customers. How does it improve Microsoft's or game publishers revenue when exactly these people almost never buy games. Considering theres no homebrew scene in Xbox360, the sole reason people get their consoles modded is to play copies.
I doubt that this effort will even result in an increase in revenues that will be enough to pay for the enforcement. There must be better ways to improve profitability.
It is not only that for Microsoft. They also have to care for their game developers, who are obviously going to bitch if theres rampant piracy going on and MS isn't doing anything for it. When there's the constant fear that your console could get banned from online play at any time, people begin to think if its just wiser to get the games they like and not bother with it. Unlike PC's, consoles are just supposed to work, and complicating things takes that aspect off. Yeah it wont stop piracy completely, but it will lower it.
First of all let me say that the market for used xbox consoles just got extremely dangerous!
Microsoft needs to set up a system where you can check the status of an xbox console remotely so people can still sell consoles with confidence... 600K Xboxes are about to go up on ebay for a deal that is just too good to pass up.
Secondly if you assume that you do not mind playing games offline that you have pirated, you can still beat the system. Is that not what this is all about?
Step 1: Buy an xbox that has been live banned for very cheap off ebay. It has already been modded, so you dont have to pay for that.
Step 2: Download 50-60 dollar games for free and play them to your hearts content, offline.
After a few games you have already made your money back from the initial purchase of the console.
What if you want to play on xbox live? You have a live console that you do not hack and just enjoy online games there.
You still have to buy games that you want to play online, but there are a lot fewer online games that are worth playing than there are short and sweet single player games that you can just download for free.
The only problem with this approach is that some (undoubtedly small) percentage of users who are in fact doing creative things by modding their xbox could also fall victim to being a false positive from whatever method Microsoft is using to identify the modders.
Many users seemed to get banned this time after they played their pirated copy of Modern Warfare 2 before it was released, so it shouldn't be a problem for those who aren't modding to play pirated copies. MS isn't of course disclosing their methods to identify modded consoles, but this seemed to happen to many.
There are three reasons to mod your Xbox:
1. Turn it into a cheap PC
2. Play homebrew software (basically #1)
3. Steal games.
All of these rely on the same method: replace or disable protections on the OS or base firmware. It's in the quick start guide(the thing that tells you what is and isn't included) that if you mod your xbox, you will not be able to play Live! and may not be able to play the games you own.
So why the hell is anyone surprised about the ban?
And why the hell is anyone even angry about the ban? They expected it!
This is really simple. You don't like the product, don't buy it. Microsoft hasn't misrepresented a thing here. It's kind of the same thing as the hackintosh, actually. Is Apple evil too? If so you have a real simple remedy -- don't buy it. These companies are within their rights entirely. If someone wants to sell a different kind of game console and a different kind of game network where games are cheaper and mods are allowed, then fine. Maybe there's a business there. Maybe this is your big chance. Go start that business and stop whining.
All of that is useless because you agreed to their terms of service when signing up for Live, which also contain terms about just exactly this. You wouldn't get far in court.
I don't know how it is where you are living, but a 16 yr old American has quite a few legal employment options.
There is a war going on for your mind.
"My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Microsoft ban 600,000 consoles last night. I guess it's pretty serious."
Will tomorrow bring us a story how MS's holiday goal is 1,000,000? Internet journalism at it's finest.
http://team-xecuter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51518
Mow lawns? Yard work? Do stuff for your parents? I know it's a strikingly new idea to most teens, but your parents don't HAVE to give an "allowance," and I would dare say that some of them may even be willing to pay their children to do jobs that they otherwise have to pay someone else to do... like clean the house if they do maid stuff, or mow/garden/etc if they hire landscapers, etc...
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
Got news for you. The console manufacturers- not just MS- are in this for the money, and enthusiasm for the console doesn't really do that. Matter of fact, they probably don't want people finding out too much about the console anyway, because that opens the way to homebrew and/or piracy, regardless of the intention of the original hackers. (Even if it wasn't used for piracy, MS and its gaming rivals would rather you could only use your console via their official channels, which likely make them more money).
Nothing new here; 25 to 30 years ago, Atari tried to suppress information about their VCS console and 400/800 computers to stop other people making their own games and reducing Atari's slice of the pie. (They did, however, and their efforts beat the heck out of Atari's third-rate offerings).
In short, MS et al don't care about enthusiasm. Their "best customers" are the ones who spend lots of money on games through official channels.
(BTW, though I disagreed with the above comment, I didn't consider it "flamebait".)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Wouldn't "Dude! this Xbox has a mod-chip so you can play copied games!" be the main selling point of such a console?
Actually, you use the Xbox Live service at Microsoft's invitation, on the terms of a seperate contract you establish with them when you pay the subscription (the Xbox Live terms of service). It has nothing to do with the contract of sale of the console itself. If they wanted to, they could have a term banning you from going on Live if the console's horizontal instead of vertical. It's a breach of that contract, so they're entitled to follow through on the penalty outlined in that contract, provided there is no local law which supercedes that contract term.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
That would be a terrific way to punish console modders - force output to 350x240.
There's a large, officially supported homebrew scene on XBL. They even have a channel to publish your games and get paid for them. There's a lot of officially published info on the system, including getting into the graphics hardware and creating networked games. There's not a whole lot you can't do with their system other than not writing managed code (which may/may not be a big deal depending on what you're doing). I'd say the main intent here is to get rid of pirates.
It's clear this guy isn't interested in going to court, if he's admitting that his recourse would be to commit fraud against a retailer who sells MS products just to get back at MS.
I don't know why he thinks cheating a dealer out of $X of retail product is going to hurt MS in any way at all ... either the dealer is going to eat the loss or his insurance will cover it and his rates will go up. Or maybe he thinks the dealer he buys stuff from is responsible for MS Live's decisions and should eat the cost on their behalf...
1. With XNA there is 0 argument for writing software for your 360. MS has given you all the tools to write/send software to the 360
2. If you have a modded box, MS really doesn't care, what they care about is if you play online and have potential advantages over other players
If you mod, just don't play it online - they can play offline and do whatever they want, just don't play on Live
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it.
Actually, there's no reason to mod your xbox to write software for it.
There's a hobbyist dev kit! It's a free download, even. You can write code for the XBox on it for free, and some schools are doing this. Now, if you want to install that code onto your own XBox... you need to pay an annual membership fee for the service that lets you do this, and then you can load the code onto your own unmodded xbox, and you can connect to it with a debugger and stuff. No hacks or mods necessary (in fact they interfere).
(And that fee also covers what you need to submit the stuff you write to the process that lets other people download it, and lets you get paid for that. I have bought a game or two that were written this way. There's some innovative stuff in there.)
And this information is based on what study? As we know, people who download music from torrents are actually buying more music than those who don't. Why should it be different with X-Box players?
The fact that modders can play some games for free, doesn't mean they pirate ALL the games they have. I'd speculate that people who tinker a lot with their X-Boxes are more likely to get an X-Box game as a present, for example, which generates revenue for Microsoft.
Then don't buy it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I wonder why people go through the whole hassle of pirating games, one you might get the ban hammer and two it might ruin your XBOX. Just so you can save a few bucks? Why not just wait for six months or so then hit up eBay or your local used game store. Sure you might not be able to play the latest and greatest game with all your friends online but you also won't get your XBOX banned or ruined.
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
I made up obviously fake percentages as a rhetorical advice. I hope you can use that on the 6th grade reading comprehension test you're trying to pass.
Comment of the year
I'll bet money he plays just a few games. Now do your math. It's close to a wash at 75 pounds.
Except that 75 Pounds didnt go towards legally purchasign a game. It went to the person who mod'ed the X-Box. So it's not a wash for MS.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
So, now if you want to go to eBay and pick up a used console, you are at HIGH RISK. (This goes for the entire used XBOX market.) MS really should set up some kind of verification system where you can call in a serial number and check an XBOX or "preowned" system where you can get a guaranteed, stamped approval. I'd bet that pretty soon, we are going to see a flooded market of XBOXes that won't be able to connect. Imagine what Craigslist is about to look like.
:) DOUBLE BAM!
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
There aren't that many good online LIVE games IMO, so it makes a lot of sense to have the cheap "dead" console to play the majority of the enjoyable ones. And if you really want to play LIVE, just mooch off your friend
It doesn't count because there's absolutely no need to mod or hack your console to develop using the Microsoft tools.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Yeah XNA is great for 360. But as it's directly supported by MS, people don't need to mod or hack their 360 to develop homebrew software for it. Which just strengths my point that only reason people mod their 360 is to play pirated copies.
I have several friends with modded consoles and hand held systems. The only chatter they generally spread is encouragement to mod your own system so you too can download ripped games.
There was nothing "random" or "arbitrary" about banning a select group of members from online services due to the detection (in one fashion or another) of non-standard hardware.
The argument that it stifles innovation or profit is rather flat when taken at face value. For some systems it might make sense, but there are outlets already in place for people that want to develop for the XBox 360. There is a thriving independent developer community out there. Streaming media? There are plenty of ways to get that rolling as well, legitimately.
You just can't rip games is all.
Maybe I've just missed it. Can anyone point to a real life example of something worth modding your system for that doesn't involve torrented games, tv shows, music, movies, etc.
And before someone sidesteps the discussion, no, putting in a larger hard drive doesn't count in the context of this discussion.
Well, to be fair, if we can infer anything from the recent music studies, the same people that are hardcore enough to mod their xbox and steal some games are still buying other games. In music's case, it's been shown a few times those people downloading music frequently are still legally buying more music than the average consumer.
recent reference: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090828/0444096038.shtml
Having said that, we can't really know for sure right now since nobody has studied games specifically, as far as I'm aware. It's probably not that far off.
I'm a little torn on this though, since I have a modded original xbox for xbmc, but my 360 is unmodded. I like the idea of getting rid of cheaters, but there still are some valid reasons to mess with your box in some cases.
It's astounding that comments like this manage to get modded up so high when they contain unverified data. Like everybody else here, I implore you to give us the source of those numbers.
The following is hardly evidence, but merely an anecdote that may be typical of some Xbox users: I have an original xbox. I don't do much online play, but I do own a significant number of games (more than 10), and have played most of them through. After I noticed my Xbox starting to become irrelevant, I picked up a [legitimate] copy of Mech Warrior and soft modded it purely to install Xbox Media Center (now XBMC). Currently, XBMC is the only application that I use with the Xbox. I have never played a pirated Xbox game (on my system or otherwise), and I have never cheated on an Xbox game (on my system or otherwise). I certainly did not mod my Xbox in order to do either of those activities, and I do not plan to ever do those activities in the future. If I did play online and were banned, it would be unjust, unwarranted, and fiscally irresponsible from Microsoft's standpoint in that they would lose out on my monthly revenue. In fact, the main reason that I have refused to use Xbox Live is because of Microsoft's inane policies with regard to modding.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the XBOX 360 mod is basically flashing the DVD drive so that it can load games from backup DVD's.
The mod does not however remove the protection such an extent that homebrews can be loaded.
So, assuming this is still correct (haven't had a a 360 for over a year), what can you possibly do on a modded xbox 360 if you aren't copying games?
People who cheat on games ruin the experience for everybody else.
There is currently one chip out which allows you to rollback your xbox kernel to a vulnerable kernel (4532 or 4548), AFAIK xbox live will not play run on these kernels. If that is correct (and i have no reason to believe it's not) then none of these people were cheating. All the other chips are pirate only chips (go on CD-drive to allow pirated games but cannot modify disc images).
So this is to do with "99%" piracy "0%" cheating "1%" running linux,etc
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
That's a bit different though. People went from downloading illegally to downloading legally because downloading is more convenient than going to the music store and buying a CD, then ripping it to your computer, and the legal download sites allow previews of the songs before you buy. I think modding hardware, downloading DVD ISOs, and then burning the DVDs is less convenient than buying the game, and in some cases, full games can just be downloaded on PSN or XBox Live these days.
There is also no way to rent most music, so it's basically either buy or don't buy. Most games have demos you can download, and if not, most games can be rented for a few dollars a night.
I think the person who downloads an MP3 out of convenience, and someone who goes out of their way to get something for free are two entirely different people. The latter can't really make an argument for convenience or one for "try before you buy."
And that right there is why MS is evil.
You shouldn't have to pay them to put code on your own box.
Now, mind you, I *would* be ok with them only allowing signed games to get onto XBL. They could very easily do that without outright refusing to run the games at all though.
Unfortunately, telling a pirated game apart from a homebrew game is not easy, and it's clearly in in MS's business interest to treat them both the same.
All of that is useless because you agreed to their terms of service when signing up for Live, which also contain terms about just exactly this. You might get far in court.
While a TOS is more valid than an EULA he may be able to win in court depending on the circumstances.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Dude, it's a fucking typo and Slashdot has no Edit option. Of course it's supposed to be "device", congratulations, you win. My typo is no excuse for the morons on this board who have no reading comprehension skills, but feel compelled to "correct" me anyway.
So my measured and intelligence response to you is, "go fuck a goat." Thank you.
Comment of the year
Oh look another typo! Crucify me now!!!
Comment of the year
I don't think it's a big deal to have a separate, modded box for development. And after this development, modded Xbox 360s should become cheaper. This is about the Xbox 360, right? The headline says Xbox, but I know what's up :p You do not have to pay Microsoft to put the content on your own box, you have to mod it. How you accomplish that is up to you. What Microsoft (rightly) restricts you from doing with their online service afterwards is up to them. Now, if it interferes with any offline activity, that is some total bullcrap... It's your box, and you ostensibly have a legal right to do as you like with it (as otherwise permitted by law.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Its not even cheaters since there's no modding titles - no one has cracked the signed code on the discs, so its purely to stop "backups". I'll give people the benefit of the doubt, and it would be slightly more convenient to not load the disc in the machine even when its already on the harddrive through the "load to disc" feature. But if anyone seriously thinks these folks aren't ripping games, you gotta be kidding yourself.
Is it no surprise that among those 600,000 users banned (nearly 4% of their users!) that there was some collateral damage?
One user, who reported having spent over $5200 on the xbox and XBLA, wrote to Consumerist that Microsoft banned his fiancé's unmodded console, and then treated them like criminals when they tried to get Microsoft to fix the problem:
http://consumerist.com/5402056/xbox-gamer-says-he-was-banned-online-for-no-reason
Linked from there is a story from another user whose xbox suffered a fan-induced RROD. Not wanting to wait nearly a Month for Microsoft to fix it, he took it to the shop to have the fan replaced, apparently tripping some sort of modification flag. Microsoft's response to him? Literally (and I quote) "But this is what you get for tampering the console." (sic).
What a disaster.
Maybe I don't understand the nature nor purpose of these mods, but isn't what you do on your hardware your own business if you are not stealing from Microsoft?
Actually, Microsoft is saying pretty much that. However, if you do mod your hardware, you cannot play on Microsoft's server. You can still use your Xbox in offline mode. It is your XBox. However, you cannot get onto Microsoft's servers, of which you do not own nor have an inherent right to. Basically, if you want to mod your own XBox as well as play online, you had better buy two systems, and only mod one.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Another example: Rockbox.
It now runs on several mp3 players, and adds additional codecs, crossfeeding, better EQs, better battery life in some players, etc, etc.
:x
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
You're allowed to mod your hardware. You're just not allowed to use modded hardware on their service, it says so in the contract you agreed to while using their service.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Have a nice day.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Those music studies only prove that 10% of those that download music, spend more than all the people that don't download.
This is blinging
This is still correct and the answer is there is nothing you can do with a modded xbox except play pirated games. End of story.
Some people are confusing the two because this wasn't the case with the original gen 1 xbox, others are confusing them because they don't know the full story and I guess a few are deliberately blurring the issue because they want to believe in the nobility of modding consoles or something. However MS make a pretty sophisticated (.NET based) dev kit available for free so you can write your own software, and will even help you sell them to a huge worldwide audience. You don't have hypervisor level access but then you don't need it to write your own software.
You don't HAVE TO PAY to put code on your own box. You just have to pay if you want that code to interact with Microsoft's servers.
If you don't want to play on XBox live you can do whatever the hell you want to your Xbox. Just don't try and connect to Microsoft's servers. It's very simple. It's not really nefarious.
Non-sense. ToS clearly states clearly they don't allow unauthorized modifications. You're not allowed to mod your xbox, period.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
When I was a teen (not too long ago, I'm only 22 as of writing this), I couldn't afford every game I wanted. You know what I did? Went down to Blockbuster and paid a couple bucks to hire it. Sometimes I was lucky, and one of my friends owned a game I wanted, and would let me borrow it. A few times, we would even plan so we each got different games, so we could trade them when done. Now, I have a younger brother (13yo) who burns every PS2 and XBox game he can. I'd bet the farm the majority of these haven't seen more than a couple of hours of playtime. They have absolutely no value to him. I asked him how many games he's beaten, start to finish, and the closest he could think of was 'unlocked all the characters in arcade mode on Tekken'.
--sherman42
With the abundance of the red ring of death syndrome it's rather sketchy to buy a used xbox 360 already.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
As someone who modded their xbox (not my 360 which remains unmodded). No one with a modded xbox buys game, they download them. The notation that its for backup is silly. There are 2 people out of every 10,000 that use it for backup. I'm not against it being done, I'm all for people being able to back up their games since its a pain in the ass to get replacement disks in most cases,
Its just silly to pretend that the majority of modders buy games, they don't. I know plenty of people who specifically did not want their XBox modded because they would just download games for free.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Reminds me of the recent bans on the EVE Online MMO, "Unholy Rage":
"While the number of accounts banned in the opening phase of the operation constituted around 2% of the total active registered accounts, the CPU per user usage was cut by a good 30%. That is a whole lot of CPU for the rest of you to play with, people."
http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=687
In the US we hold that the presumption of innocence is a right enjoyed in criminal matters. this is not a criminal matter its a contract dispute, as such it is a civil matter and the presumption of innocence is not a right you have.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
With the Ring of Death, destruction of game disks, overheating consoles and probably other results of the famous Microsoft quality, and now deliberate sabotage, I really don't thing it's a good idea to buy Xbox, period. Why do people keep on dealing with Microsoft at all, despite it leading to pain, trouble and financial loss every single time? I can only imagine the reason as some bizarre combination of stupidity and masochism.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Not true. You can also play backups of games you legitimately own. This allows you to avoid buying the game anew when the disc is scratched. If you've got kids, you get this point.
When a company wants to increase its revenue they will initiate a ban. The pay method of the individual is never banned. The company will no longer have to provided the service that the end user payed up front for. It is then predictable that a high percentage of users that were banned will immediately repurchase it.
600,000 Gold accounts are worth how much?
Arbitray:
600,000 x $27.50 USD (3 months) = $16,500,000.00
AVG user is on day 10 of 90 day prepaid Gold Service
Ban-Hammer is dropped
M$ just made 14,850,000 pure profit by not having to honor remaining service
Follow week after the Ban-Hammer 50% of users repurchase Gold accounts $8,250,000.00 of new cash surge
If M$ or any company for that matter wanted to curtail cheaters and modders, they would ban your Credit Card (pay method).
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
Except that the last ban wave will cripple some offline features as well, such as HDD installs (a *big* loss since the DVD drive sounds like a jet engine when spinning), being able to move savegames to other consoles (no more playing you're savegames at a friends place), and I think even some of the media center functions. Also, you won't be getting any game patches anymore, which is also a major downside since so many console games are released full of bugs these days.
Then that's why I haven't get my ass kicked from Live. I knew it had something to do with MW2. My Xbox is modded (it's legal over here) but I only have been playing original games. What kind of idiot it takes to play a pirated game the day/week before release? It's like wetting yourself with blood in the middle of a forest when a bunch of wolves are looking for you
The worst part of this tho..
Games used to allow local lan play, most don't anymore... It basically killed the idea of a LAN party. You have to connect to live, just to play a game with someone sat next to you.
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Sieg Heil!
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