Microsoft has said it will actively pursue illegal activity relating to Xbox 360 piracy, following reports yesterday of Modern Warfare 2 having been leaked onto the internet.
"Our commitment to combating piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox Live community remains a top priority," said MS when we contacted it regarding the leak.
"All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them," added MS.
"We take vigorous action against illegal activity related to our products and services, but we do not comment on those details. Consumers should be aware that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 to play pirated games will void their warranty."
Sounds like a blanket statement, but the message is clear; pirate Modern Warfare 2, or any other 360 game, and MS will send out the helicopters.
people who copy games and use them on-line before even the launch date are idiots, As for after the launch date, I believe programs like abgx360 will make almost any copy fully Stealth. So what can Microsoft really do!
There was a story I read recently about some Playstations becoming unuseable after a Sony system update went wrong. This gives me an idea!
To play online we have to connect to Microsoft servers. There could be a system in place whereby your Xbox has to download a patch to play the game online. The patch wouldn't be necessary for those not online and wouldn't affect the game or the console, BUT... if the game were pirated, or the Xbox altered, the patch would render the console useless. As pirates know they'll not be able to use their warranty, or play any game online, I suspect this would certainly reduce the number who have or are considering going down this route.
That idea could easily lead to a lawsuit, and it needn't be carried out by the pirates themselves (whom would then be admitting they were pirating in a court of law). Even innocent third parties could raise a lawsuit since such tactics could lead to MS actively destroying the private property of customers, and given the penchant for human error, the risk of accidental "bricking" of a console exists.. That's vandalism and it's illegal; not to mention that it overreaches MS's legal authority. There are governmental law enforcement agencies for that sort of thing that have the mandate to pro-actively intervene.
My brother got his copy today and I will probably get mine tomorrow or friday as its just been dispatched. But really all these stories daily about MW2 are just getting irritating.
where did you guys buy it for it to already have been dispatched? And how much for. I got mine at coolshop.co.uk where its 24.99 for pc, and £37.99 for 360/ps3, play.com haven't hurried with my 360 order yet.... i want to play it now!
My brother pre ordered his from game (he got the limited edition of the mw2 console too) I pre ordered mine from gameplay £42.99 not sure what brother paid for his.
Piracy just not worth the effort on the 360, First you either have to flash or Chip your machine. Which is a bugger to take to pieces due to the weird clips its put together with,
Then you have to download the game you want. Easy enough to do, find it, download it, more than likely unzip it.
Then unless you want the ban hammer instantly swininging down on your live account. patch it in some way.
Then burn. Which you'll need a DL DVD writer with, which even in this modern age quite a few modern pcs don't come with.
Dual layer discs are also pretty expensive, £1+ a disc, and don't expect every one you burn to work.
Then after all that hasstle, you will still more than likely get kicked for live.
Piracy just not worth the effort on the 360, First you either have to flash or Chip your machine. Which is a bugger to take to pieces due to the weird clips its put together with,
ermmm the dvd drive is very easy to remove..yeah its held down but you wouldn't just expect it to slide out...
Then you have to download the game you want. Easy enough to do, find it, download it, more than likely unzip it.
Then unless you want the ban hammer instantly swininging down on your live account. patch it in some way.
very rarely...its 99.9% of the time already patched...
Then burn. Which you'll need a DL DVD writer with, which even in this modern age quite a few modern pcs don't come with.
dont know what age your living in lol
http://tinyurl.com/ycf2n8n
Dual layer discs are also pretty expensive, £1+ a disc, and don't expect every one you burn to work.
if you use crap dvd's that is...
Then after all that hasstle, you will still more than likely get kicked for live.
very true
effort<results= not bloody worth it.
again very true and i agree
you are right tho it is a hassle.. think about it if your chipped 360 breaks... what you gunna do? your gunna have to pay to get it fixed where you could have sent it to Microsoft for free!
In comaparison to modding a ps2 or a wii or even the original xbox the 360 seems to be a lot of hard work for potentially little reward.
The wii on the other hand is a modders dream. You don't even have to open it up to add support for all kinds of great stuff.
Even if you do decide to chip it if you've got an old one its just a case of undoing a few screws and literally pressing the chip onto the dvd drive or connecting the chip vis a ribbon cable.
However the dreamcast was by far the easiest thing to mod ever. make boot disc insert boot disc go.
In comaparison to modding a ps2 or a wii or even the original xbox the 360 seems to be a lot of hard work for potentially little reward.
The wii on the other hand is a modders dream. You don't even have to open it up to add support for all kinds of great stuff.
Even if you do decide to chip it if you've got an old one its just a case of undoing a few screws and literally pressing the chip onto the dvd drive or connecting the chip vis a ribbon cable.
However the dreamcast was by far the easiest thing to mod ever. make boot disc insert boot disc go.
Most of the Dreamcast games I had were self booting, only noobs used a boot disk.
Also my original Xbox required a chip to be soldered onto the mainboard, my 360 only required a simple firmware flash on the dvd drive, in that regard the 360 was pretty straight forward.
Its worth noting that DL DVDs can be had for as little as 24p a disk, a DL DVD burner less than £13 if you don't already have one. So given that option its easy to see why a lot of people would consider it worth doing.
If Microsoft wanted to knock piracy on the head, then it could do so pretty easily, the fact that it doesn't is what I find interesting, piracy isn't likely to help sales of software, but it tends not to be a bad thing when it comes to shifting hardware...
If Microsoft wanted to solve the problem, then they would remove the BIOS chips from the DVD drives and replace them with ones that couldn't be flashed. There is no legitimate reason for anyone to be flashing the firmware on an Xbox DVD drive, so why continue to make it possible? I'm sure someone would find a way round it by replacing the chips etc, but it wouldn't be as easy as it currently is, and that would be enough to put a lot of people off.
I'm tempted to give it a go, but at the same time not that bothered.
It is quite interesting that MS don't just remove the board and completely stop it. but as you said it can help hardware sales. Especially in places where finding legitimate games is incredibly hard.
Nintendo on the other hand have made revisions to hardware to stop the use of first and second gen chips on the system. Although there are now new chips, that work differently.
But Nintendo's main concern seems to be the Homebrew channel and softmodding, as pretty much every new update that comes out is packed with some new way to block the homebrew channel and little else. However there are always fixes posted within 24 hours of the update. But watching the cat and mouse game between the modders and nintendo is also quite interesting. Especially considering that on a couple of occassions features that nintendo 'introduced' like the ability to run channels off an SD card and use larger capacity cards than 2 gb were introduced by modders months previously.
It wouldn't surprise me if eventually nintendo added some kind of video playback support or even a GOD service tunning games from memory using a separate HDD. its all entirely possible as its already been done.
it looks like piracy is always going to be possible, but remember that unless there are enough of us paying customers, then you pirates wont have anything to pirate, as any industry with no cash would fail.
Interesting to read some people saying the easiest machine to pirate for was the dreamcast, and we all know what happened to that, and sega after!
I look at it this way, if i go to work for a month and then dont get paid, i would call that unjust, as i am sure everyone would, but to pirate a game is to take away someones elses wages! A company is really only a registration number, its the employees that get effected.
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