Don't count on modding your Xbox 360: Microsoft exec

15 Comments by Vladimir Cole Sep 2nd 2005 11:00AM
Filed under: Hacks, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360, Online

Andre Vrignaud, Director of Technical Strategy for Xbox Live, Microsoft Adding third-party hardware and software to current-generation Xboxes is a rewarding hobby for some gamers. Mod chips frequently extend the feature set of the original machine in a way that Microsoft and its developers never intended. Some mods are relatively harmless, such as running import DVDs on your Xbox. Some mods facilitate piracy of games.

It's this latter use of mod chips that game developers and hardware manufacturers would like to stop. Though they're not claiming to have built the Xbox 360 to be invincible to modification, Microsoft claims it will certainly take longer.

In his comprehensive feature on Microsoft's Xbox 360 presentation at GDC Europe 2005, Gamasutra's Simon Carless paraphrases Andre Vrignaud on mod chips for the Xbox 360: "Microsoft took 2 and a half years on security this time round, whereas the Xbox only had around a year…. It's going to be a long time before the Xbox 360 gets modded."

Well, it worked for Windows, right? First released 20 years ago, Windows is certainly an impenetrable fortress of unmoddable stability. Cheap shot. We know.

[Via Xbox-Scene.com]

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(Page 1) Reader Comments

ROG27: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

I believe mod chip companies have gotten their hands on xbox360 dev kits and modded them already. And the system isn't even out yet.

Lite: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

like every other MSFT product on the face of the earth, this will be hacked/reverse engineered by someone with enough time and interest to do so.

Sorry Billy Boy, that's the nature of the beast.

jimmy: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

realistically, i'll give it 6-months till the first chip and a little under a year before there is a bustling community of modders ensuring that microsoft loses money on tons of systems it sells.

Companies shouldn't even make these dumb statements about piracy and modding, it just emboldens people. Look how many times microsoft changed xbox, the 1.6v of the xbox was intended to counter modding and a solderless chip came out for it pretty damn fast.

Chiablo: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

Wasn't the PSP supposed to be 'unhackable' due to the lack of propriatary media (UMD discs)?

Knowing the strong-headed nature of modders, I'm sure they'll have a working mod chip in 3 months time.

Eran Hawke: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

Now if only people would come around and pop open the PSP 2.0 firmware so I can play emulators again, I'd feel an bit better about my Sony paperweight.

I can understand people locking these things out of playing pirated games, but why lock out custom software?

batman: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

no shit fellas. regardless of whatever crap MS spews about unmoddability the box is windows-based and it WILL be modded ASAP. the 360 will be more powerful than a lot of computers when it hits the scene, and with the three cores it's just asking to get hit by modder (who i'm sure have be thinking about this for a while).

Bottom Line: MS is covering their asses. (We did everything we could to stop piracy...)

batman: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

sorry, the 1st word of in the last line of the 1st paragraph should be plural (modderS). i can only type fast or accurate not both :)

JDuB: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

that guy looks like hes wearing makeup or something.

id hit it ...

CapAmerica: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

I say give it 2-3 months and the 360 will be modded.

Nothing is un-hackable. There will always be away. You build a harder system to crack all your doing is creating better hackers.

Noodlez: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

I recall a few days back seeing a crap load of pics of a dev xbox and one of them had a mod chip setting ontop of it, Looked like a xbox mod chip however, but what was so weehoo was a the pics came from a modchip group. ISo I bet within 3 months 1st gen chips will be out.

r0Be: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

On the topic of piracy, I have to say that Nintendo was very effective in the steps it took to make the Gamecube non-hack friendly.

I wonder how the Revolution will turn out....

Blue Balloon: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

What if someone modding and later, something gonna be wrong and machine come alive? Blame on hacker. *keke*

jc: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

hehe, it looks like this guy's hairline has been modded...

Steve: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

The guy in the picture figured he was unhackable too until he fell asleep at a party and got his eyebrows shaved off.

Those damn hackers are everywhere!!

hall: Dec 18th 2005; 9:07PM

I do believe that the 360 will be hacked someday but if companies put enough effort (read "money"), they can do quite well. Look at DirecTV and the P4 and P5 cards. Some claim that they're hacked but if they are, it's not public (so what's the point ??). It's been a couple of years now....

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