The massacre has begun!

[runawayprisoner]

I sincerely hope you don't have a modded XBox360... and if you do, make sure you DON'T use your backups when you sign in on Live... or if you did, sucks to be you. Microsoft has finally taken this to the extreme measure... because they are selling their consoles AND games at a loss... and they wouldn't be able to survive much longer with such so...

Up: Illegal users are outta here!
Down: Half of them are considering the PlayStation Network now...

It is estimated that about 30-45% of XBox Live users are on modded consoles... so this may mean a drastic loss for them and for Microsoft. Not only that, it's been reported that some legit users who own unmodded consoles and genuine game copies have also been banned... forever... so the number of losses could be greater than that.

Edit: Official words from Microsoft:

One of the great things about LIVE and the unified community is that we work hard to create a level playing field for all gamers and have a no tolerance policy towards inappropriate behavior like hacking or cheating. As part of our commitment to our members, we do not allow people that we have detected to have modified their console to connect to LIVE. This is an important part of our efforts to try and maintain a fair gaming environment for the large majority of gamers that play by the rules. This topic is more important than ever given the recent release of the Halo 3 beta. As a result, some consumers that try to login to LIVE who we detect have illegally modified their console will get an error code (Status Code: Z: 8015 - 190D) when trying to connect to the service. These users will not have their account automatically banned from LIVE, but they will no longer be able to access the service from the console they modified.

We have stated in the past that customers can only enjoy access to the Xbox LIVE community through the use of a genuine, unmodified, Xbox console and we will continue to enforce this rule to ensure the integrity of our service, the protection of our partners and the benefits of our users.

[doggieiscool]

This is a good thing. I don't pay retail price for games as I buy region free titles, so I can live with paying $60AU :P But no doubt some Xbox 360 guy will reverse engineer and find away past this latest thing lol

[runawayprisoner]

When a console is banned, it's banned for life. Even if someone finds a way to get back, they will still live in the fear of being banned again... and losing all of their XBox Live stuffs again. The thing is that... a lot of people poured a lot of money into their Live accounts... and now they lost everything.

[Seta-San]

don't mod your xbox. it's that simple

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

When a console is banned, it's banned for life. Even if someone finds a way to get back, they will still live in the fear of being banned again... and losing all of their XBox Live stuffs again. The thing is that... a lot of people poured a lot of money into their Live accounts... and now they lost everything.

[cloudsBro]

Theres likely to be a workaround solution to the security, as their always is with Microsoft!

[Paratech]

But what if you're banned and you didn't have any backed up games or modded your XBOX? I'd hate to get a lifetime ban from a mistake.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by Seta-San

don't mod your xbox. it's that simple

Tell that to 45% of current XBox360 owners who have gotten their XBox360 modded... or modded them already. I'm not one of them. My uncle has one... but it's not modded, so... yep.

Originally Posted by Paratech

But what if you're banned and you didn't have any backed up games or modded your XBOX? I'd hate to get a lifetime ban from a mistake.

Ehh... some people have reported that already. However, I think there might still be some kind of... inaccuracy in those reports... as you know how people are very denial when it comes to this sort of thing.

[ShadowDancer]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Tell that to 45% of current XBox360 owners who have gotten their XBox360 modded... or modded them already. I'm not one of them. My uncle has one... but it's not modded, so... yep.

Where did you pull that 45% from?

The 360 has sold almost 10 million units and you mean to tell me that almost half are modded? Damn.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by ShadowDancer

Where did you pull that 45% from?

The 360 has sold almost 10 million units and you mean to tell me that almost half are modded? Damn.

South-East Asian countries alone would be at 75-85%. :] Do you actually know that in Vietnam, the rate is up to 95-100%? And almost ALL of the consoles in the country are modded... the ones that are not modded are probably just imported... or just brought back by some American Vietnamese kid who doesn't know anything about pirates.

[industrian]

So there are around 4.5 million modded XBox 360s in the world? That's a nice figure you pulled out of your ass.

[runawayprisoner]

Are you sure that the total sales figures are 10 millions? And I'm not just pulling things out for the sake of bashing Microsoft or anything. Even if it doesn't reach that number, it's still very close to that. How about over 5000 users snatching the torrent file of Lost Planet on a registration-closed torrent site? And how about another 10,000 or so on a direct download website? And about 32,000 more on another torrent site? And that is not to mention the fact that duplicates of the same torrent still get like 20,000 to 25,000 downloads in total... just for Lost Planet. Supposing that the same guy will download the same game (in this case, Lost Planet) like 2 or 3 times for whatever reason, there's still like... about at least 25,000 modded XBox360 owners who want to own Lost Planet. If you consider that one guy will only snatch the same game once, we would have more than 100,000 XBox360 owners who want to have Lost Planet... on ONE public website alone? How insane is that? And what about other websites? And what about those guys in China who make direct duplicate of pressed discs and pour them into Asian markets like Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippine and such? (Which means that there are a lot of people who don't download their games)

Edit: Oh... and in case you're going to say that the images are only snatched and it doesn't mean that the snatchers don't have an XBox360, I'm supposing that for the past 2 years, over 10,000 people didn't have anything better to do and just had to keep their internet connections open 24/7 to download games that they probably would never be able to use?

[sims]

I didn't know those countries take so much interest in expensive luxuries like the xbox360.

I should open a business of shipping highend gaming desktops there since they seem to have money to squander.

Wait, aren't they third world nations?

[runawayprisoner]

They are... but they are third-world nations with a lot of relatives in US and developed countries in the world. Gee... do you know that computer hardwares sell like crazy over there? I usually buy a few luxury components here and sell them there for some extra $50-$100 for a vacation. You'd think that not so many people would have even a computer to mess with but... you're wrong. I was shocked when I first came here. We're still using Unix and Pentium 1 systems for word processing over here... but over there, they use Pentium 4 computers for that sorts of things. :/ The rural areas may not be that advanced... but the cities sure are very advanced... in technology.

P/S: Oh, and I gave you a hint there. Whenever you go to those places, bring a long a few luxury computer components... and you'll be able to sell them for that much.

[Nucking Futs]

I wonder if that move was really smart, the Xbox (not 360) only sold itself because people modded it and because of halo 1/2, i don't know if that situation has yet, but i can imagine that there are quite many modded xbox360's out there, together with angry owners.

[Typhoon 01]

Originally Posted by sims

I didn't know those countries take so much interest in expensive luxuries like the xbox360.

I should open a business of shipping highend gaming desktops there since they seem to have money to squander.

Wait, aren't they third world nations?

Ignorance is Bliss

[Cid Highwind]

I wonder if there's any bootloaders that allow you to run at least imports without having to mod your console. Otherwise they have just lost another potential customer: No Senko no Ronde would be a real letdown for me.

It's a good wakeup call for pirates, I don't think it's a bad thing. People can still play the game offline if they want, they'll just have to accept it. Now it would truly suck if this is what makes you go legit, but there's no way of turning back. That's why I personally think it's better to work with game serials to ensure everyone is using his own copy.

[SisterCheeba]

You still haven't given a source as to where you're getting these figures from. And even if those south-east asian figures are true, they're not exactly known for being a hotbed of 360 sales. Considering 360 modding's nowhere near as ubiquitous as original xbox modding was yet, I find it a little hard to believe. The original xbox was a hotbed for modders by the end, but I doubt the figure reached anywhere near 45% even on that.

As for banning accounts, if that article's anything to go by, they're banning consoles, not your actual live account. Still makes it a pretty crappy thing to do, mind.

In this day and age, with regular firmware updates a matter of course, it seems a little crazy to mod your console so early in the generation anyway. If you really had to, it'd be better to wait until the modders ironed all the major kinks out first. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see Sony and Nintendo doing the exact same thing further down the line. Although at least with Nintendo you wouldn't miss the online service much

[@ruantec]

i´ve heard that even non-moded 360´s with original games are getting banned!

thanks god i don´t use Live

[Homicide]

With all of the 'red light of death' stories I've been hearing, seems that MS is kinda failing it as far as their role in the console wars go. Has anybody here who owns a 360 seen one of those yet?

[@ruantec]

at least my 360 is working well and am very happy with it