As long as the 360's online experience isn't hackable and flooded with cheaters, then I'm fine with the 360 being hacked.

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I think at the end of the day, the PS3 will be more easily hacked. The Xbox 360 may already be fully hacked (running unsigned code) by the time the PS3 comes out, but where it took the 360 a year the PS3 will be hacked in 9 months. No, I don't know any of the security details, this is just a gut feeling based simply on the fact that the PS3 comes with a HD and Linux installed.

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Hi all i think the people that hacked the 360s dvd drive firmware rock i mean why not hack the 360 we arnt doing eny harm after all we own the consoles? so if we buy a new car are they saying we carnt mod it with alloys or new paint or tune it up.so i say good look 2 all the xbox and xbox360 hack3rs out there keep up the good work.

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It's amazing to see just how technically savvy some poeple are to even be able to think up ways to hack products. That being said, I really do hope that piracy doesn't become rampant on the 360. The Dreamcast was hacked so quickly and easily that a lot of people stopped buying games at all. I loved my Dreamcast, and I am sure that because piracy being so wide-spread that was one big part of why it wasn't able to succeed.

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Steven Arnold, I don't think you understand the implications of modding. It's interesting that you compare owning the 360 to owning a car. Alloys and paint aren't actual modification to how a car performs, but just its appearance. If someone modifies a car's engine so it can go faster than it usually does, the purpose of doing so is to go on (most likely) illegal street racing, in which a racer can hurt him/herself and others.

It's almost the same thing as hacking. Yeah, there are its uses for homebrew and expanding the 360's media center capabilities. But most people are interested in obtaining the firmware hack for their own selfish purposes: piracy; which in turn, hurts the industry. TheSpecialist and the team responsible are right in not releasing that hack to the public because they know the implications of doing so.

It has been rumored that Microsoft will release a game development kit for around $100. I really hope this is true because, now, there really won't be a good reason to hack the 360 except for piracy.

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HACKING IS NOT STEALING!!!! ITS OUR HARDWARE WE BOUGHT IT!!!!

its what you do with it that may be considered stealing. But there are lots of Legit reasons for hacking hardware.

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Well considering Sony has the hacker's OS of choice preinstalled I think that it will be hacked within 9 months... possibly within 3 months... because if you have a full OS on your system then they can do pretty much anything with a little creativity

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They should do like sony's PSP and force updates in order to play certain games. Only not make it optional, just encode it on the disk. And when you put the disk in it runs the update. If your drives firmware isn't what it should be, brick it. That's what i would do if i was in MS's shoes.

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I believe MS wants the 360 to be hacked. Thats why they made all the statements about security to intice hackers to get started on the system with extra ziel. When xbox 1 was hacked console sales spiked. If the 360 is fully hacked before PS3 launch it could put them over in the race to become the overall winners.

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"force updates in order to play"

Ok this is bad. The most recent MS update for the 360 killed my system. I recently got it replaced (after a 5 week wait on MS's end) only to have the new one die because of this....now I go back into the 5 week queue.

The best part is they argued the warranty with me as well. I'm slowly being inspired to mod this damn thing.

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This is my theory:

Each of the big 3, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all secretly want their consoles to be hacked, but keeping a controlled level of piracy. (Difficult and/or costly to impliment)

Being able to pirate games does encourage a fair amount more people to buy the console. Probably these people would not have bought the 360 if it weren't for this. Since most consoles aren't hacked until 6 months to a year after release, they are taking less loss per system sold after that time.

The thing is, even if most people with a modchip or equivalent pirates most of their games, chances are that they will end up still paying for a few of their games. But those few games are all they need to make a decent profit.

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MS leaving the debug code in the bios... sure, maybe that will turn into a viable hack down the road (as long as you don't want to play online).

But as far as ripping the cover off my X360's case and DVD drive just to swap the running DVD with a backup, well, to me that is more of a proof of concept.


Personally, I think some homebrew could be cool. The ugly side is all of the little kiddies running cheat code in Halo because they can't learn to play the game.

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#9, Microsoft does not care about hardware sales. They aren't making money off of hardware. The money is made in the software licenses to game developers. If games sell well Microsoft makes money, if games don't sell Microsoft loses money. I think they still barely break even on original Xboxes.

#4 is right, piracy helped kill the Dreamcast.

Hacking for the right reasons is great. Exploration helps with innovation which in turn helps create a more useful product. Hacking just to steal games from developers, who are now spending record amounts to develop next-gen games, hurts developers. The financial risks make it more likely a heavily pirated game could kill a game studio.

I think an Xbox 360 Fan Boy comparison of profit by game developers before and after the original Xbox mod chips appeared would be telling. =)

Buy games, support the industry =)

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Games makers deserve piracy in payment for the large amount of rubbish they package up too sell us.
Over the last 6 years the overall quality of games has fallen while the use of FMV clips has boomed.
If the game maker wastes a large part of the budget on actors and FMV clips while the game itself is poor, then piracy allows people too see this without praising the company with a sale.

I don't mind buying a good game, there are just not many good games made.

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If someone modifies a car's engine so it can go faster than it usually does, the purpose of doing so is to go on (most likely) illegal street racing, in which a racer can hurt him/herself and others.

How wrong you are. Some people just like their car to be faster, full stop. Or, they like to go to (legal) drag strips and get timeslips to prove how fast their car really is. Don't let Fast and the Furious fool you - while there is a street racing scene out there, it's nothing at all like those movies make it out to be. Those kids who are smashing up the roads and all over the news? 99% of the time they are driving completely stock cars. The ones who actually mod their cars for street racing, don't come anywhere NEAR civilization.

Now, as for modding being strictly for piracy? My Xbox Media Center installation would seem to say otherwise. But I really have no interest in hacking the 360, since my Xbox does all the media center things I need it to. The 360 will remain strictly for games.

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Them hackers must have some deep pockets, or nerves of steel. I could never bring myself to tinker with my $400 toy.

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To #15, Ryan Waddell,

Good for you for not wanting to modify your 360. You're speaking rather naively about the street racing scene and others' purposes for modding. In my previous post, I qualified my statements with "most likely" or "mostly" and you misinterpreted my statements as "strictly." Read the copied statement of mine in your post.

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