Comments on: Eight news stories 19.6

By: eXOBeX

eXOBeX — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:27:19 +0000

On a 1.0-1.5 Xbox a modchip offers no more piracy-related features than does the onboard, flashable TSOP. A hacked BIOS (or a legitimate BIOS, or a Linux BIOS) can be installed on either.
On a 1.6 Xbox a modchip offers the owner the flexibility that was already built in to the 1.0-1.5 Xboxes.

On a 360 DVD drive, once again, a modchip offers no more piracy-related features than does the onboard, flashable TSOP. Either a patched BIOS can be flashed to the drive or a modchip can be fitted that patches the BIOS while it’s running.
I haven’t paid much attention to the Infectus, but as far as I know any motherboard-and-Infectus modding leads to dashboard rollbacks and Linux booting, rather than the playing of backups.

By: Paroxysm

Paroxysm — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:59:49 +0000

Yes I must remember how evil mod chips are when my friends and I are playing our thousands of dollars of imported software. Truly horrible things. Imagine if we couldn’t circumvent region protection? We might have had to spend our money on an entirely different industry. I’m sorry game developers!

By: Broken

Broken — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:02:30 +0000

Oh yes, its a terrible day for gaming enthusiasts when we can actually play our imported games that weren’t released where we lived. A terrible day indeed.

By: pkt42

pkt42 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:21:53 +0000

Oh, and

http://www.videosift.com/video/How-anti-piracy-screws-over-people-who-buy-PC-games

A bit impolite, but I’m 100% behind him. And surely nobody can say that he is a pirate.

By: pkt42

pkt42 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:20:31 +0000

About the modchips: very GOOD news to combat the region division stupidity. And for homebrew.

We bought consoles, we didn’t rent them. We should be able to do whatever we want with them.

My god, anyone says cheese, you say PIRACY BAD!!!. There are more uses for them, you know?

And about EA and Riccitiello: go speak with anyone of the ¿hundreds? of people that can’t play the copy of Mass Effect they bought. And now, see the pirates?. They can play with no hassle. Again, DRM hurts the customer. EA is doing a big disservice to their customers, and the worse thing is that when their games have less sales because of this, you and them will say PIRACY BAD!!! instead of addressing the real problem.

By: Dudley

Dudley — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:45:26 +0000

Except that modchips DON’T in themselves enable piracy any more than “owning a PC” enables piracy of PC games.

By: BC

BC — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:12:41 +0000

And, at the moment is the system not already similar to what David Braben wants? You do a degree for a foundation (I don’t agree with Skillset 100%, but working out the bad from the good is what portfolios are for), then you get a graduate job, then you try not to get sacked for 2+ years, then you can start applying for ‘proper’ programming jobs. All that’s missing is a final exam …that is unworkable, like most games academia.

And, while I’m at it …NFS is an iterative car racing game. 12 months sounds like more than enough to keep churning out the same tat and hitting number 1 every other xmas.

By: BC

BC — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:20:44 +0000

A 12 month development cycle? Lucky sods …my last two games took several months each. Admittedly one of them was a DS game