Microsoft Bites Back
Nearly 3% of Xbox Live users face the 'ban-hammer'.Published 11/11/2009 at 11:20 by Gastos84
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Up to 600,000 Xbox users may find they can no longer access Xbox Live. Those affected are those that have modified their consoles in order to play pirated games; a move that is contributing to almost £1 billion loss for the gaming industry, each year.
The consoles will still work, but modifying it will void the warranty and get you banned from the Xbox Live service. Modifications to an Xbox enable them to run unofficial software and pirated games. Microsoft released a statement which clearly outlines their stance on the situation:
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…
Microsoft has some 20 million customers on its Xbox Live service.
Source: BBC News
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.« Previous 1 2
« Previous 1 2
JustHonour | 11/11/2009 13:51
Member
255 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
Out of interest. Is it the user id or the physical machine that is banned? If it’s the physical machine I suspect there is quite a number of annoyed customers on Ebay – or similar – who are currently sitting on semi bricked machines (no online is a full bricking as far as I’m concerned but I am aware there are some users who rarely or even never venture online).
toutski | 11/11/2009 14:24
Legend
4164 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
Console is banned from online I believe. You can buy another console and use your existing gamertag AFAIK.
JustHonour | 11/11/2009 14:27
Member
255 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
So the actual console is nerfed?
toutski | 11/11/2009 14:45
Legend
4164 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
It will still work offline.
Gastos84 | 11/11/2009 16:54
Team TSA: Writer
3888 TSA Points | Member since: Apr 2009
You sound concerned for some reason…Anything you want to be telling us?
JustHonour | 12/11/2009 03:33
Member
255 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
Not really. I’ve considered an XBox a few times. Second hand would obviously be an option, although less of one now I know it could have been banned from live. Where I live (Asia) piracy is apparent on all the consoles except the PS3 – which I own. I personally prefer to purchase the genuine disk but back in the days of the PS2 that was literally impossible. All games in all shops were fakes. I’m glad the PS3 hasn’t been cracked. I’m also happy that MS has a means to punish the users of pirate disks. I was simply interested to hear if there were any complaints from people buying banned boxes.
Dexter17 | 11/11/2009 16:08
Member
3274 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
And about time to.
gazzagb | 11/11/2009 16:09
Master of speling mitakse
2760 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
But most people who pirate games dont go online with their chipped consoles. All of my mates who havae got chipped consoles have 2.
MaxJCT | 11/11/2009 16:51
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416 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
and… checkMATE!
hehe
BlingOnMyWrist | 11/11/2009 21:23
Member
1485 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
I wonder if Sony has the ability to block your console. I understand that there is no piracy on the PS3 at the moment (unless it’s unannounced) but if the day comes…
theshockwave | 11/11/2009 21:29
Member
1874 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2008
Sorry, but I haven’t read all the comments, so someone may have answered my question. Is this something to do with ‘flashing’ (is that the right word) your Xbox? Someone said if you flash your Xbox you can (illegally) download games (some of which aren’t out) for free. Is this what the story is about or is it something different altogether?
illogicology | 11/11/2009 22:49
Member
857 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
If Microsoft wants to ban pirates, fine. It’s in the T&C, people who mod their consoles have absolutely no right to complain (well, except on those not so rare occasions where Microsoft carries on billing them) but do the rest of us really have to buy in to these old, long debunked myths on piracy?
There have been very few studies into the financial effects on piracy but the ones that have been done returned with a conclusion that there is no evidence to suggest piracy influences sales.
Last month a study came out that found that serious pirate mp3 horders spent more on music legally than any other group of consumer.
People with longer memories than the RIAA will remember that before Napster, the music industry was having one of the hardest times in its life. Total CD’s sold went on the rise after the Mp3 boom, why does the music industry report huge losses in sales? It calculates every illegal download as a lost sale. When it says it’s lost income it means it has lost the potential income of all those files. Until iTunes they would count a single track with the worth of its album? Downloaded Smoke on the Water? That’s not a few quid it cost them, it’s the whole £20 for a prestige copy of MachineHead.
The success of the original Playstation console over the N64 and Saturn was largely due to the ease of chipping and copying. How many of you had a chipped PSone? I know I did. So did everyone else I knew. I also owned a hell of a lot of legal games.
I wish people would actually look at the evidence of piracy’s effect on the industry before reciting facts given to them by an industry with a vested interest in keeping a seriously outdated business model. You think it’s wrong to download something without paying? Great, for a lot of situations we’ll probably agree but I wish the consumer would wise up to the fact that anti-piracy groups are dealing with some very dodgy numbers. We should find out what the real impact is before screaming “death of the industry.”