Microsoft Bans Xbox 360 Pirates from Own Hard Disks

[HTM~TheGame]

Microsoft’s recent mass banning of users of modded consoles from Xbox Live apparently did not go far enough – banned users are now learning that they can no longer use their console’s HDD for any meaningful purpose, with installation to the drive no longer possible on a blacklisted console…

An abridged description of the changes:

Firstly, and most obviously, you cannot connect to Xbox Live on this console any more. This means no more game updates (aka title updates), XBLA games, marketplace content, netflix/sky player and so on. There is no way around this, all online capabilities are now disabled PERMANENTLY.

Hard Drive installs are now disabled on the banned console. This means any disk-based games you have will no longer play off of the hard drive.

There is no way to fix this, that functionality is simply gone from the banned 360.

Windows Media Centre functionality is disabled. It is still possible to stream video/music content via the video library.

So, in summary:

Your Banned 360:

* Cannot go on Xbox Live

* Cannot install games to the HDD

* Cannot use Windows Media Centre extender

* Cannot be used to get achievements from backups without corrupting your profile

With no warranty, Internet access, or even a usable hard drive, it might have been kinder just to “brick” the consoles and render them entirely inoperative…

[HTM|Minus]

i am afraid to turn mine on now that this has happened.. I am running old firmware and in need of a new update and i only can play wave 3 games and under lol.

[Freak]

Big Brother is watching you,ms is just asking for more hacks the way I see it.We made it so we will decide how you use it.BS!

[HTM~TheGame]

Now imagine if they found a way to do that to our PC's legally. Make our hard drive inoperative if they discover pirated software... Time to stock up on Hard Drives.

[Freak]

If they were doing that to pc's no os sales for ms,everyone except a few dummies would look at alternatives.

[HTM~ZenEye]

Format c:, re-install fedora.

[HTM|Minion]

Well, I may be the odd man out here, but I say anyone who modded their console to play pirated games deserves the ban. Just because the internet makes it easy to steal stuff doesn't make it legal.

[Freak]

What about modding the console hd for game storage? So you borrowed a game from a friend & store it so you can play it occasionally but don't like it enough to shell out $50 for something your not gonna play that often.To me it's the same as here at home loading 2k4 on 4 machines with the same disc,well only 3 now.

[HTM~TheGame]

I don't agree with pirating, however I think this move could end up hurting Microsoft more than helping. They have already banned 600,000 consoles in the U.S. alone with their goal being 1 million by Christmas according to an official report. The reason this may hurt them is I doubt many of those Million people are going to go out and buy a new 360 and new games again. Also, that is 1 million people that could have potentially spent money on new/more peripherals and perhaps bought retail software for games they couldn't find pirated or simply thought the game was good enough to buy. Not only that, but that's 1 million subscribers to xbox live that pay a monthly fee - gone. No doubt piracy hurts the software industry, but being Microsoft is already behind in sales when compared to it's PS3 competitor, they could use all the sales they can get in the console market. Piracy=bad... Losing 1 million customers=worse

[HTM|Minion]

So you borrowed a game from a friend & store it so you can play it occasionally but don't like it enough to shell out $50 for something

Yeah... right lol. I guess that would be ok if everyone's "friend" wasn't at the other end of a torrent.

And you bought the 2k4 disc... you can run it on as many of YOUR computers as you want to, that's why the cd key error only occurred if it saw the same guid from different IP addresses, you can run the same copy multiple times from the same location.

That is NOT the same as downloading pirated software to run on your modded 360. (or PC for that matter)

[HTM~ZenEye]

Well, I may be the odd man out here, but I say anyone who modded their console to play pirated games deserves the ban. Just because the internet makes it easy to steal stuff doesn't make it legal.

Bingo.

Rampant piracy is one of the main reasons developers put so much more time and effort into creating a good console version of a game, rather than a good PC version. They would rather support a platform that makes them money, not a platform that has a cracked .exe file out within a week of their games' release.

I hear in the future new mobo's will have some HASP-type security features that new software will be able to draw upon to prevent piracy, we can only hope so. Piracy really is killing the PC game markets.

[Freak]

MS takes another step,this 1 is total bs.

Does It Make Sense To Ban Players From Xbox Live Just For Using A Glitch?

from the seems-a-bit-extreme dept

Microsoft recently got some attention for cutting off hundreds of thousands of Xbox Live players for using modded Xboxes -- even if there was no evidence they were used for cheating. This is already leading to talk of a class action lawsuit against Microsoft. Even so, Microsoft is now going even further, issuing temporary bans for all of Xbox Live for anyone using a certain "exploit" in Modern Warfare 2 that lets a player set off a grenade after they die in the game. It makes sense for Infinity Ward to create a fix for their own programming mistake, but it seems rather ridiculous for Microsoft to kick people out of the game for doing what the game actually allows. Why blame players for merely doing what is allowed by the game itself?

[HTM|Minus]

my 360 never got banned and live still works same with the "backups" lol most games i purchased on the ps3 after trying on xbox.
New games don't work tho, so i sold the 360 to get a snowboard.
I got my snowboard yesterday but missing out bigtime because i don't have a passport to get to the USA to go to White face mt. in newyork state.