Xbox 360 has been hacked....sorta.

avelanchefan · May 2006

Okay, so since the release of the 360 the modding/hacking community has been frothing at the chance of getting past MS's incredibly encrypted machine. Well the community/scene did just that, just in a way that microsoft nor anyone else never thought of.

Let's go back a few years here. See there where a couple guys that wanted to play their hacked Xbox games on live, but as most of you know MS has a way of figuring out if you have a modded box or not. They can see the chip through live, how I have no clue (something with electricle current from the chip), but anyone who has ever played live with a chip "on" is banned in less than 24 hours. That I know is a certainty.

Ok I am off track sorry......so these boys decided they were going to hack the DVD drive of the xbox. See MS uses special encryption at the beginning of each disk, this encryption tells the console whether the disk is legit or not when you load it in the DVD tray. Well after two years they where able to create a flash for the DVD drive that tells the console that the disk is original, but in fact it is a burned/copied disk. (See copied disks cannot recreate the encryption)

Now fast forward to the 360, as the boys were developing the hack they thought..."hmm wouldn't it be ironic if MS used the same encryption for the 360?" Well yes it would be, and as stupid as MS is, they did. They got cocky and never thought of changing their encryption, I mean did they not look at Sony PS2 and see the swap disk method, which is a rudimentry way of doing it! So the long of the story is that the boy's worked their **** off on the Xbox hack (which incidently came out in the last few weeks) to play on Live, have now officially hacked the 360, all because MS did not change their ways. Stupid, stupid, MS.....almost fill bad for them.....almost.

http://www.team-xecuter.com/

Go about half way down the page to see the video.

Demiurge · May 2006

I don't think I have the stones to even mess with mine. What's the point?

PolkThug · May 2006

Demiurge wrote:

I don't think I have the stones to even mess with mine. What's the point?

You can rent games and copy them and build a nice collection.

Demiurge · May 2006

So, I can steal?

avelanchefan · May 2006

Yep, or you can download them off the net. They run about 5.5 to 6 gigs each, so you will need a dual layer burner.

Shizelbs · May 2006

Ah, but what you guys are forgetting is that the HDD is very much different this time around. Its not as easy as it was with the first XBox where you could just go buy a bigger HD and slap it in. I mean, does the 360 use a modified IDE connection to the drive? Anyways, where the heck are you going to find a bigger hard drive at the moment.

I could go on, but at the end of the day, I have faith in the hacking community to find a solution to that too.

Shizelbs · May 2006

I guess I should that of all the hacked Xbox-es I've seen, they all had the games loaded straight to the hard drive.

avelanchefan · May 2006

The thing is you only need a hard drive for the home brew stuff. as of now they do not have that solved, but it will be soon I am sure. This hack is for pure stealing only....or making "backups" of your current 360 games.

Refefer · May 2006

Honestly, I think "backing up" games is a cheap shot. Remember, when you pay for your xbox 360, Microsoft LOSES money on the purchase. Only by purchasing the games is Microsoft going to turn a profit WHICH WE WANT. Microsoft and Sony making a profit means that they'll make next generation consoles, which in turn means that we will have consoles to play.

Ultimately, this doesn't even matter... what everyone wants to see is the xbox used in a more "legitamate" occupation: linux. With those three cores at your finger tips... well, no one will be buying a new server for a while.

avelanchefan · May 2006

Refefer,

I do not need a lecture, if you failed to notice backups was in parenthesis. Jesus we all know what people are going to do with it. And besides there are other things to consider.
1) MS is going to lock that DVD drive like it's fort knox, so only the people with current systems will probably be able to do the hack.
2) How many systems are currently on the market....maybe a million.
3) How many people are going to do the hack? Maybe 10%? So you are talking 100,000 people maybe 200,000 max. MS still makes a profit off the other 80%.

How many people really hacked the original XBox? What 5 millioon + units sold (probably more than that) and how many are hacked? I would say less than half a million. I know at least 20 people with xboxs, and I only know 4 that have them hacked.

neomagus00 · May 2006

.5 mil out of 5 mil is what, 10%? i'd say WAY less than that have the mod done... most 'gamers' (i.e. people that post on boards like this) are mostly in contact with other gamers... this is a subculture that is radically different than the 'norm', and so the upshot is that the percentage of people _you_ see with modded xboxes is far higher than the general population, simply because you don't interact with them. this is similar to me going to a very technical/geeky school, where i'd say up to 35% of people understand what this does, where, and why: "clear; gcc -O3 -W -o prog *.cc; ./prog arg1"... if i showed that to probably 95% of the general american population, they'd think i'd gone mad.

as far as the 360 goes, avelanche is probably right, they're gonna make that dvd drive harder to get into than a rich man's daughter, so the impact will be minimal, but that's not really the point... it's the principle of the thing.

refefer - i like your argument, because it's not automatically anti-MS (which most gamers are, by default, for no real reason i can see), but how do you know MS loses money on the 360? this is out of personal curiosity, not an attack, btw.

Shizelbs · May 2006

neomagus00 wrote:

....but how do you know MS loses money on the 360? .

Its pretty much open and general knowledge. Sony will be losing money on each console also.

Refefer · May 2006

Neomagus,

Here's a link to Buisness Week Online which breaks down the xbox 360's figures. They take a hit of $126 per unit: not exactly insubstantial. If I recall correctly, to break even they need each owner to own on average 7 360 games... but that figure might be more, I don't remember.

Sony has it much worst: because of the cost of their cell processor, the parts alone are estimated at around $700 - $800 and are looking to sell it at an obscene price of $600 - $650 per unit says Gizmodo

Demiurge · May 2006

I'm sure they more than make up for it on games, componnents, XBox Live accounts and points, etc.

In any event, I would love to own a company where I could make hundreds of thousands of people happy with my product and not have a problem losing money doing it. That's just crazy.

cheddar · May 2006

MS isn't being charitable. They're locked in a fierce competition with Sony for market share and want to have as near a monopoly in the media center market as they do for OS's.

Analysts have Sony pegged to kick their butts again, so it looks like they'll have to make at least one more console to dethrone Sony...

Also, considering HD-DVD players are $499 at the low end and MS will want who knows what for their add-on, Sony's blue-ray player with a PS3 included for a hundred or two extra may not be so bad...;)

Demiurge · May 2006

Yeah, I know, and I hope they kick Sony's **** quite frankly.

cheddar · May 2006

Actually, I hope they keep kicking each other's **** so we can get good hardware every few years that they have to sell for less than cost. I'd hate to see the machine MS would stick us with if Sony wasn't around

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Refefer · May 2006

I don't know how many people will be willing to trade a mortgage payment for a PS3. $650 is a serious amount of money, especially when you have an uphill battle against MS with a year lead.

It'll sell well, but I think when people have to choose between an PS3 and an Xbox 360 w/ 5 games, well... you can work out American Greed

That's not to say I don't like Sony, I just think the deck of cards right now is stacked against them

avelanchefan · May 2006

Refefer wrote:

I don't know how many people will be willing to trade a mortgage payment for a PS3. $650 is a serious amount of money, especially when you have an uphill battle against MS with a year lead.

It'll sell well, but I think when people have to choose between an PS3 and an Xbox 360 w/ 5 games, well... you can work out American Greed

That's not to say I don't like Sony, I just think the deck of cards right now is stacked against them

Gotta agree with that Refer, I think sony's downfall is having the blue ray packaged with it. The BR technology is too new and it is leading to a price range that has people scratching their heads.

Now if Sony packaged the system with a non-BR drive then they maybe on to something.

cheddar · May 2006

We'll see how this all shakes out past the rumors. I agree $650 would be high. But there are also rumors it could be as low as $499.

http://yahoo.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060506:MTFH32162_2006-05-06_00-48-14_N05165315&symbol=6758.T&rpc=44

That would be a no brainer for buying a next gen player and console on the cheap.

Guess it depends on how serious Sony is about keeping its #1 crown...

biffbyun · August 2006

i'm waiting to see what the PS3 has to offer...

Xbox 360 has been hacked....sorta.

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