Proud owner of a $54.21 Xbox 360 Off ebay.

[Ji@nBing]

well don't you feel ashamed of yourself for Modding your Xbox 360 so that you can play downloaded games on it , its like stealing the hard earned money of the developers.

I think whether in sign language or in any other way , talk of piracy should be kept away from well respected forums like Neowin.

I am a game developer myself & i feel the pinch, when you talk about modding your console.

I have a buddy with 3 kids, a mortgage, and car payments. He just can't afford games at $70 a pop, so I modded his console for him. I do believe devs should get money for their work (that's why I haven't modded my own console), but hey, a gamer has to get his games somehow.

[Death Proof]

I have a buddy with 3 kids, a mortgage, and car payments. He just can't afford games at $70 a pop, so I modded his console for him. I do believe devs should get money for their work (that's why I haven't modded my own console), but hey, a gamer has to get his games somehow.

Now thats not the right approach , if a person cant afford a game worth 50$ he should try not to fall prey to pirating . At best he could have rented and played original games.

Im pretty sure that over the life of his console , he will pirate & play at least 10-30 games . This translates into a loss or theft of intellectual property rights of 500-1500$ . Many Gaming houses run totally on the mercy of banks , as they provide them loans to develop their games. Now with the credit crunch , nobody is willing to give any credit to any game development house. So we need all the money we can make . Because , its without this money we wont be able to churn out good enough gaming titles which will not only disappoint gamers but will also mean less earnings for us.

Cant you notice the absence for A++ gaming titles in the year 2009+10. Do not turn to pirating games & other forms of media. Not only is it illegal, it harms the industry as a whole.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Bad move IMO, you're likely to hit issues down the line. I'd never buy a 360 second hand, when you couple the hardware issues with people modding consoles as well.

No point in paying out your ass to keep your 360 alive/keep fixing it, when you can save up for a better made one (jasper) and get a warranty with it.

[Ji@nBing]

Now thats not the right approach , if a person cant afford a game worth 50$ he should try not to fall prey to pirating . At best he could have rented and played original games.

Im pretty sure that over the life of his console , he will pirate & play at least 10-30 games . This translates into a loss or theft of intellectual property rights of 500-1500$ . Many Gaming houses run totally on the mercy of banks , as they provide them loans to develop their games. Now with the credit crunch , nobody is willing to give any credit to any game development house. So we need all the money we can make . Because , its without this money we wont be able to churn out good enough gaming titles which will not only disappoint gamers but will also mean less earnings for us.

Cant you notice the absence for A++ gaming titles in the year 2009+10. Do not turn to pirating games & other forms of media. Not only is it illegal, it harms the industry as a whole.

The thing is, he would never have bought those games anyway. His 360 was collecting dust; he was only using it as a DVD player for his kids. So it's no loss to the game companies. In fact, it's a gain for a few games as he's bought DLC for them (I know he bought the level pack for CoD4, among others).

Not really trying to justify it. It is what it is. But he knows I'm good with PC's and asked if I could do it for him, so I went ahead and did it. Nice to be able to play games online with him.

[Comic Book Guy]

1,300 Xbox gaming consoles stolen in Mississauga, ON, Canada

[Death Proof]

As i said earlier, he could have always rented the games , it always starts out as a harmless little thing & then turns into an ugly obsession of playing every game you can or cant just because its 1.5$ a pop since you can pirate it.

[Ji@nBing]

As i said earlier, he could have always rented the games , it always starts out as a harmless little thing & then turns into an ugly obsession of playing every game you can or cant just because its 1.5$ a pop since you can pirate it.

You rent a game, you only have it for a few days though. With his kids, he doesn't get a lot of gaming time, so it can take him a loooooong time to finish a game. Plus there's multiplayer. If you get into the multiplayer of a game, you want to keep it around.

Again, not justifying it. I buy my games. But then I have no kids or major financial responsibilities. I can understand why in his case he went this route though. $70 is a lot just for a game. I've spent hundreds on games in the past month or so since I got a 360 again. Not everyone can do that. What happened to $40 games?

[micro]

You cant say that because he pirated games that the developer lost money, there was never any intent on purchase and never any LOSS of sale. That is all hypothetical.

So you mean to tell me every pirated copy of photoshop being used equates to a 800 dollar loss to adobe? I dont think so.

Im not saying that i support piracy but i hate it when people make such claims.

[Death Proof]

Meh Pirates ! Will say anything to justify their cause.

[Roxkis]

Meh Pirates ! Will say anything to justify their cause.

IF you develop games to get paid, I don't think your games will sell anyway.

People will always pirate. ALWAYS.

Reading your posts reminded me of that anti-pirating skit

they added to dvds that stops no one from pirating.

[+Warwagon MVC]

I'll let you guys know when it dies.

[Elv13]

I beat you, bought one for 20$ CAD (17$ USD) and The only thing I had to do to make it work was to kick it with my feet (the fan was stuck, overheating the console in less than 1 minute).

It is an arcade, so no HDD. So it is totally useless to me, but 20box :p who care.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

You rent a game, you only have it for a few days though. With his kids, he doesn't get a lot of gaming time, so it can take him a loooooong time to finish a game. Plus there's multiplayer. If you get into the multiplayer of a game, you want to keep it around.

Again, not justifying it. I buy my games. But then I have no kids or major financial responsibilities. I can understand why in his case he went this route though. $70 is a lot just for a game. I've spent hundreds on games in the past month or so since I got a 360 again. Not everyone can do that. What happened to $40 games?

Not true.

Most rental schemes nowadays work on a 1 copy out for as long as you want basis. Or if you pay a bit more you can get more than 1 title out at a time.

Love Film in the UK does that, and I'm sure Game Fly in the USA does also.

That is subscription packages, but if you're that poor what's ?8 a month to play as many games as you can in 30 days?

[Kushan]

We've debated the Piracy issue to death, we don't need to go over it again...

This isn't Windows, they aren't going to support a huge market of usb drivers for a system they try to keep closed against modification at the best of times.

Except they don't need to support a "huge market of usb drivers". USB sticks these days all use the same driver, that's why you haven't needed to install a driver for a USB pen since the windows 98 days. Otherwise they'd be useless, you wouldn't be able to bring your USB pen to university or work or whatever, because chances are the driver wouldn't be installed on the machines there.

In fact, you can plug in any USB drive (pen or hard drive) into the 360 and play your music/video files from it, providing it's formatted correctly. There's absolutely no physical reason why Microsoft NEEDS to prevent game saves being stored on the drive, other than to cut down on gamesave sharing - which happens anyway. If Microsoft genuinely were altruistic with their storage restrictions, they wouldn't be cashing in on it by charging an absolute fortune for the hard drives and memory cards.

Bad move IMO, you're likely to hit issues down the line. I'd never buy a 360 second hand, when you couple the hardware issues with people modding consoles as well.

No point in paying out your ass to keep your 360 alive/keep fixing it, when you can save up for a better made one (jasper) and get a warranty with it.

I disagree, I think it was a good move. The RROD is actually pretty easy to fix, he's already shown that he can dismantle a 360, that's half the job. A bit of soldering (And I mean just a bit) and a few washers and you're RROD-free. I'd say that's well worth the $150 he's saved just by getting his hands dirty.

[Richard Hammond]

Except they don't need to support a "huge market of usb drivers". USB sticks these days all use the same driver, that's why you haven't needed to install a driver for a USB pen since the windows 98 days. Otherwise they'd be useless, you wouldn't be able to bring your USB pen to university or work or whatever, because chances are the driver wouldn't be installed on the machines there.

In fact, you can plug in any USB drive (pen or hard drive) into the 360 and play your music/video files from it, providing it's formatted correctly. There's absolutely no physical reason why Microsoft NEEDS to prevent game saves being stored on the drive, other than to cut down on gamesave sharing - which happens anyway. If Microsoft genuinely were altruistic with their storage restrictions, they wouldn't be cashing in on it by charging an absolute fortune for the hard drives and memory cards.

Its not just that, if you allow unencrypted non-microsoft hardware it could potentially be used as a way to exploit the system which is why you can use USB sticks for everything but save games and live arcade games.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I disagree, I think it was a good move. The RROD is actually pretty easy to fix, he's already shown that he can dismantle a 360, that's half the job. A bit of soldering (And I mean just a bit) and a few washers and you're RROD-free. I'd say that's well worth the $150 he's saved just by getting his hands dirty.

RROD free for how long? I remember DARKFiBER constantly improving his 360 internals and it just got to the point it kept dieing and he gave up. I think he's got a long running topic in the 360 section somewhere with a lot of useful info in it if you do try to fix your own 360.

Then I doubt warwagon has been tagged here, but a 360 off of ebay could easily of been modified on the firmware front at some point then reversed for sale. MS don't ban instantly so you could end up with a banned console down the line depending on how careful the previous owner was.

Can you check the warranty seal without actually opening the console or is the seal on the inside? (in other words to see it, you have to remove it). I can't remember.

I guess if you're willing to realise you could end up spending more in the long run to keep a working 360 doing it this way, it might be a "good deal". I would rather just save up for a brand new more efficient, less power hungry 360 for $180 or whatever an arcade is, than buy a second hand one for $55, then maybe 6 months down the line need to go buy another.

Its not just that, if you allow unencrypted non-microsoft hardware it could potentially be used as a way to exploit the system which is why you can use USB sticks for everything but save games and live arcade games.

Yes, Sony has been hit hard allowing 3rd party USB/Bluetooth devices and secondary operating systems run on their console... Consoles need to be more open like PCs to stop us consumers getting monopolized on accessories/functionality.

Edited July 5, 2009 by Audioboxer

[Kushan]

Its not just that, if you allow unencrypted non-microsoft hardware it could potentially be used as a way to exploit the system which is why you can use USB sticks for everything but save games and live arcade games.

But the contents of the 360's HDD aren't encrypted, at least they're not encrypted in any particular way that wouldn't work on any regular Hard Drive. In fact, I believe the filesystem is a varient of FAT32 (FATX?). The contents are digitally signed, which prevents them from being modified, even if you do have direct access to them. You can easily connect your 360's HDD to your PC and read the data from it, either by taking apart the drive shell or buying a cheap adapter ($10 at the most). There really is no reason as to why a regular hard drive or USB pen can't be used to store game saves or XBLA games.

In fact, google around some dodgy nasty torrent sites - you wont find any XBLA games or DLC on them, it's currently completely impossible to pirate them, even for those that do have filesystem access to the 360's Hard Drive.

RROD free for how long? I remember DARKFiBER constantly improving his 360 internals and it just got to the point it kept dieing and he gave up. I think he's got a long running topic in the 360 section somewhere with a lot of useful info in it if you do try to fix your own 360.

Then I doubt warwagon has been tagged here, but a 360 off of ebay could easily of been modified on the firmware front at some point then reversed for sale. MS don't ban instantly so you could end up with a banned console down the line depending on how careful the previous owner was.

Can you check the warranty seal without actually opening the console or is the seal on the inside? (in other words to see it, you have to remove it). I can't remember.

I guess if you're willing to realise you could end up spending more in the long run to keep a working 360 doing it this way, it might be a "good deal". I would rather just save up for a brand new more efficient, less power hungry 360 for $180 or whatever an arcade is, than buy a second hand one for $55, then maybe 6 months down the line need to go buy another.

Yes, Sony has been hit hard allowing 3rd party USB/Bluetooth devices and secondary operating systems run on their console...

If done right, the "X-clamp fix" is pretty permanent. I know a couple of people who did it literally years ago and haven't had any issues since.

As for the warranty, the seal is just under the faceplate of the 360, so it's a little bit of both. As far as I know, Microsoft's repair partners don't bother checking the seal 9 times out of 10, since they're paid per repaired box, so it's not really in their interest to. Many people have sent off 360's with broken or non-existent warranty seals and had them repaired anyway. Still, if the console has been to MS before, they'll have a record of it and I believe warranties cannot be transferred, so if it has been registered with MS under a different name before, you are on your own.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

But the contents of the 360's HDD aren't encrypted, at least they're not encrypted in any particular way that wouldn't work on any regular Hard Drive. In fact, I believe the filesystem is a varient of FAT32 (FATX?). The contents are digitally signed, which prevents them from being modified, even if you do have direct access to them. You can easily connect your 360's HDD to your PC and read the data from it, either by taking apart the drive shell or buying a cheap adapter ($10 at the most). There really is no reason as to why a regular hard drive or USB pen can't be used to store game saves or XBLA games.

In fact, google around some dodgy nasty torrent sites - you wont find any XBLA games or DLC on them, it's currently completely impossible to pirate them, even for those that do have filesystem access to the 360's Hard Drive.

Actually the Lost and the Damned was possible to put on a hard drive and play I believe.

MS' issue on that front is because the 360 will happily read a drive that has been modified outside of the 360 (like on a PC).

While it prevents taking a drive to your friends, every PS3 will force a hard drive format on startup before booting into the OS if it's not the drive that's registered to that console (or if the drives been modified on a PC). Due to Sony including a backup utility though, this means people buying new hard drives aren't left stranded. That essentially squashes any chance for running unsigned code or modifying drive content outside of the PS3.

I've had my PS3 hard drive hooked up to my PC to turn off the energy saving feature which causes the drive to spin down/up too often (if you're running say folding@home you hear the drive clicking every couple of mins or so because folding doesn't always need disk access for spells). That was okay, didn't need to format when put back in, but that's changing a drive feature in dos, not tampering with content. I can't remember the terminology used to name this feature again, something unique to western digital drives I think - Greenpower or something?

Edited July 5, 2009 by Audioboxer

[Kushan]

Actually the Lost and the Damned was possible to put on a hard drive and play I believe.

360 DLC (And Arcade games) are signed in two ways - it'll work on either a) The console it was originally downloaded to (any profile) or b) The gamertag that purchased it, providing it's signed into Xbox Live (any console).

Although The Lost and the Damned did appear on Torrent sites, it was due to someone getting a little too excited and jumping the gun. What the uploader did was they bought the DLC, copied it to a different hard drive, then booted it on the same 360 they originally downloaded it to and thought that it had worked. To try and "beat the rush" and get some Kudos, they uploaded it to TPB (or some other public torrent site), not knowing that it would never work on anyone else's machine or profile. Find any torrent with that DLC and read the comments - nobody could get it to work.

There's nothing special about TLAD, other than the hype which caused someone to jump the gun.

[Ji@nBing]

Not true.

Most rental schemes nowadays work on a 1 copy out for as long as you want basis. Or if you pay a bit more you can get more than 1 title out at a time.

Love Film in the UK does that, and I'm sure Game Fly in the USA does also.

That is subscription packages, but if you're that poor what's ?8 a month to play as many games as you can in 30 days?

No game Fly here in Canada. I'm sure he could find a way to rent them, but he would rather just be able to have them and play them when he has time and not worry about it. If this is the way he decided he wanted to do it, what do I care?:// . I'm not a member of the RIAA or something.

[PL_ Veteran]

You rent a game, you only have it for a few days though. With his kids, he doesn't get a lot of gaming time, so it can take him a loooooong time to finish a game. Plus there's multiplayer. If you get into the multiplayer of a game, you want to keep it around.

If it takes him so long he'll be buying less games. Seriously, if you have kids, you live with the consequences.

Meh Pirates ! Will say anything to justify their cause.

That's not really an argument.

[PixilEyes]

Did this thread go way off topic or what?

[Ji@nBing]

Did this thread go way off topic or what?

LOL, it's the gamers section. What do you expect? Just about every topic in here goes way OT :laugh: .

[Advent]

well don't you feel ashamed of yourself for Modding your Xbox 360 so that you can play downloaded games on it , its like stealing the hard earned money of the developers.

I am a game developer myself & i feel the pinch, when you talk about modding your console.

Guess I shouldn't mentioned everything I've done from 02-present...?

Meh Pirates ! Will say anything to justify their cause.

+1 for PureLegend

In fact, google around some dodgy nasty torrent sites - you wont find any XBLA games or DLC on them, it's currently completely impossible to pirate them, even for those that do have filesystem access to the 360's Hard Drive.

Yes, just need to look in the right places. Though to me most arcade games suck with the exception of a few..

and

kinda, and there are ways to get others DLC to work on ur 360 without their profile..

If done right, the "X-clamp fix" is pretty permanent. I know a couple of people who did it literally years ago and haven't had any issues since.

Yup, know quite a few people who have done this on their 05 boxes and have not had a problem since.

360 DLC (And Arcade games) are ^signed in two ways - it'll work on either a) The console it was originally downloaded to (any profile) or b) The gamertag that purchased it, providing it's signed into Xbox Live (any console).

Wouldn't use that word, but yes that's right.

----------------

I bought the Xbox when it first came out, as well as the Xbox 360. Have always bought games. Though times shifted and I got stuck in what many know as the trading disease. Where basically (w.e ur store is) it was a never ending tag war against GameStop, my games, and my money. Trade 3 in get 1. It sucked. For about 4 or 5 months I went with just 4 games that were all got titles. I didn't and still don't have the money to fork out $70/game. "Rent then?" This would work, if Blockbuster and any other game renting store didn't go out of business where I live. "GameFly?" Had it, worst service ever. Your treated special as a new customer after that ... they could care less. Have had more then 12 people use them and all cancel within 3-9 months. All say the same thing. So I finally went that route. "Wow, way to respect the developers". Yeah, if they can give a 17yo the money to buy the games I want when I want, then I'll give them...idk hugs? I do respect developers, as do everyone that does play burned games. Not everyone has $70 to spend whenever they want or a well paying job. In case people haven't realized, were kinda in the can right now.

How are people saying his purchase was bad? He spent $55. All the fixes that he may run into are will run him (for everything) the same price he bought the console, $55. So in the end, he will still of spent less then a brand new one. Idk about others, but if I wanted an Xbox 360 and saw one on eBay like the one he did I wouldn't be like "Meh, $55 too much for a broken Xbox 360.". He got a console for less then a game, which, with some tinkering and cleaning, was like new within hours.

As for the DVD drive spoofing. Yes, it is not as simple as swapping drives. It's as simple as running a program, grabbing a key, run program again, swap drives, profit.

Prices on Xbox 360 hard drive's are ridiculous. Yes you can do a "hack" which allows you to replace the 20gb with a 120gb 2.5" drive, but hey might mess something up or even worse ... might save some money. :o I know though, Microsoft, at least the Xbox 360 part of it, is stupid for charging so much for such cheap drives. There is a reason people do this though M$. :-\ The modding community is already growing fast on the Xbox 360 ever since people though it was a good idea to make everything and anything public. (The only reason I rag on public stuff is because to many questions come from releasing public, private...ppl know what their doing) Already it only takes a phone call and you can view the contents of your Xbox 360 hard drive on your computer. If they made it so you could use external hard drives or flash drives (which would be amazing none the less) would make it even easier for people who are the slight bit curious as to what they can do with the files on their console. "The modders will just get banned". Sometimes, not always. Sadly, that's the way Microsoft will look at that situation in a whole though.

Oh, almost forgot...OP; my friend gave me his Xbox 360 to me (same problem as urs) for free when he was leaving Xbox and going to PS3. :D Good deal though, if I saw one that cheap I'd buy it too. Already have two Xbox 360s (bedroom, and living room) but I have quite a few friends that always wanted a Xbox 360 but don't have the money. And giving them a Xbox that would of cost me $55 would of not been a loss for me, but would make their days haha. I should look into buying RRoD and DVD drive problems Xbox 360s. Their probably super cheap and with a little work I could make quite a few friends real happy.

P.S. Wrote this at 11:00AM after drinking and the 4th, so mind the spelling errors and grammar errors, or anything else I probably did wrong in there some where haha. Also, my biggest reply on Neowin.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Except they don't need to support a "huge market of usb drivers". USB sticks these days all use the same driver, that's why you haven't needed to install a driver for a USB pen since the windows 98 days. Otherwise they'd be useless, you wouldn't be able to bring your USB pen to university or work or whatever, because chances are the driver wouldn't be installed on the machines there.

I've used plenty of usb drives since 1998 (both pen and hard drive) which required drivers to be installed.

As for the DLC comment you and AB covered, if it's released on a retail disc, it is possible to pirate it without burning it to a disc.

Only example I know of is Fallout 3, but it can be done. Games like Rockband song packs (out already) and GTA4 DLC later this year will be possilbe.

Can you check the warranty seal without actually opening the console or is the seal on the inside? (in other words to see it, you have to remove it). I can't remember.

Yes, Sony has been hit hard allowing 3rd party USB/Bluetooth devices and secondary operating systems run on their console... Consoles need to be more open like PCs to stop us consumers getting monopolized on accessories/functionality.

Yes they have, it's called the PS2 and PSP. Two of the easiest consoles to ever pirate :laugh: Infact it almost killed the PSP :p

And yes you can check the warranty of the 360 by removing the faceplate. Stick is on the front of the console.