XBOX pirate complains.

[jay_l_a]

Interesting response:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_10000000/newsid_10002900/10002915.stm

I think they've got off lightly. Interesting how people define themselves as a gamer when they really contribute nothing to market.

Also interesting to hear the 'games are too expensive' argument, from people who can spend many times the price of the game on the original hardware.

 

[DeeTee_uk]

I mentioned about this somewhere else. I have no sympathy for this dick. He admits that he essentially cheated the company that sold the hardware (normally at a loss, with the intention to recoup with title sales) out of about £600. He then complains at being cut off. Wah, wah, wah.

As for the cost argument, as you say, it's a little cheap to say that when you bought the console, and knew how much games were at that point. MW2 is a little more, but the rest are pretty much where they always were. Besides which, he doesn't have some sort of inviolate "right" to games. I can't afford a top of the range car. So I don't have one.

 

[purplerat]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

That story really made my day. I love this part:

...I was pulling my hair out thinking, 'No, why me?'

It's like telling someone their dog's just died.
...

Ya, like telling somebody their dog just died and that it's all their own fault.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[DeeTee_uk]

.... after they refused to feed the dog, because it cost too much.

 

[jay_l_a]

Besides which, he doesn't have some sort of inviolate "right" to games. I can't afford a top of the range car. So I don't have one.

I think this really defines it. I've heard that complaint so many time 'but I can't afford the games'. Too bad, either earn more money, spend less on other things, or don't play.

 

[OvrClkr]

MS is to blame here, there are waaaaaaay to many peeps pirating games for the 360, heck there is even a few videos on you-tube that show how to do it.... If MS would have used HD or BD disks the % of pirates would be substantially lower. I guess MS could carre less cause if they did they would have done something by now....

 

[purplerat]

MS is to blame here, there are waaaaaaay to many peeps pirating games for the 360, heck there is even a few videos on you-tube that show how to do it.... If MS would have used HD or BD disks the % of pirates would be substantially lower. I guess MS could carre less cause if they did they would have done something by now....

Uh, they did do something - they banned modded systems from XBox Live service.

Using BD or HD to prevent piracy is the absolute worst response because it would directly raise the cost honest consumers have to pay in order to prevent piracy. Plus neither were a real option for this generation of the Xbox. Banning system, and not just accounts, is probably the best anti-piracy measure I've seen any gaming company take. No cost or hassle to honest customers and sets the pirate back the cost of a new console + modding costs(if they want to test their luck again). Absolutely beautiful.

 

[OvrClkr]

Uh, they did do something - they banned modded systems from XBox Live service.

Using BD or HD to prevent piracy is the absolute worst response because it would directly raise the cost honest consumers have to pay in order to prevent piracy. Plus neither were a real option for this generation of the Xbox. Banning system, and not just accounts, is probably the best anti-piracy measure I've seen any gaming company take. No cost or hassle to honest customers and sets the pirate back the cost of a new console + modding costs(if they want to test their luck again). Absolutely beautiful.

Not quite since the piracy rate on the 360 is huge ATM. The PS3 uses BD disks and since they are so expensive it is not even worth trying. If MS would have built the 360 using something other than a DVD then they would not even have to worry about it. The more pirates, the more MS loses money. It's a fact, just like the music industry, back in 95 if you went platinum you were among many others on the same train, at this moment only a hand-full of artists go platinum due to pirating. Costs are the same, MS and Sony charge 59.99$ for their games.

Not everyone who pirates a 360 game is doing it to play online, many people who pirate the game do it because they can or they have no cash to spend on the game. There is also the group of users that own an x-box but do not have a LIVE account.

 

[purplerat]

You keep saying MS should have used HD or BD, but you do realize that the 360 was released a year before the PS3 and the only reason Sony could do BD was because they had the inside track on it and even then it almost killed the PS3. BD/HD weren't an option for the 360 - not for Microsoft building it and not for it to be released when it did. To put out a console with BD/HD at the time the 360 was released* would have meant a $1000 console and MS still would be taking a hit. Piracy wouldn't be an issue because nobody would have a 360 in the first place.

The PS3s games might cost the same but the console still cost more. Plus Sony had a dog in the fight as far as putting BD in their consoles so it made sense for them to do it. For MS putting BD in their systems would have looked stupid and been of no benefit because it would have meant forfeiting their place as the more affordable next-gen console. Making HD standard would have meant getting involved in a costly format war which they had little stake in and also forfeiting their place as the more affordable next-gen console.


*Besides the 360 being released before HD DVD or Blu Ray were even widely considered by consumers it's not even reasonable to expect that there was any way such a feature could have been planned into the system during the development process. Essentially your looking back with hindsight and criticizing MS for something they did in 2003-2005 from the standpoint of what you know know. It's kind of like telling somebody which horse they should have bet on after the race has finished.

 

[will_chellam]

you lucky americans if in the us you pay $60 for a game - the RRP for MW2 in the uk is $100 for the standard, $120 for the hardened edition.

When i bought my xbox it cost £99, to charge £65 for a single game is taking the piss, that said, it doesnt excuse software piracy, I fully agree, earn some more money or adjust where you spend what youve got.

If xbox was bluray (and piratable), the impetus will be for the price of bluray recorders and media to drop, the same thing happened with the ps1 - i remember well the price of cd-rs dropping from about £2.50 to 40-50p when the modchippers moved in, i also remember drd-dl's being £17 each when they first came out.

 

[mi1ez]

I saw that article too and thought the guy must be a right clown

"I pirated £600 of games and got banned from XBL! Boo Hoo!"

If I knew where he lived I'd go round and put an ice pick through his XBox! These people have no idea how lightly they're getting off...

 

[will_chellam]

I agree with mi1ez (often the case) if you look on pure financial terms - even with a trashed xbxox (btw it can still play single player games forever more) the guy has saved a load of cash - he could buy another two xbox's get one chipped for single player and another virgin one for online and still have saved money.....

Thats not the point though - he should count himself lucky microsoft arent pursuing him in court - £600 is around 12 games - £1000 each is £12,000 fine +/- prison sentance...... thats what he deserves.

 

[gamerk316]

Heres a question though: Considering the small size of the 360 hard drive, many people replace it. Technically, thats now enough to get them banned.

Nevermind how much this is going to hurt M$ in the wallet over the long run, as everyone flips to the alternative. Or the fact we'll be dealing with the people who brough a used 360 from gamestop to find their console is banned.

 

[sparky13]

Heh, some people....

 

[purplerat]

Heres a question though: Considering the small size of the 360 hard drive, many people replace it. Technically, thats now enough to get them banned.

Nevermind how much this is going to hurt M$ in the wallet over the long run, as everyone flips to the alternative. Or the fact we'll be dealing with the people who brough a used 360 from gamestop to find their console is banned.

I'm pretty sure a pre-owned console from Gamestop would be checked both for modifications and to make sure it isn't banned. And I'm sure MS can differentiate between a hard drive swap and a mod chip. I'm not really sure why any consumer would be against this unless they have a modded system and are worried about getting banned. It may not be a sure fire way to stop piracy - nothing is - but it's cost effective and of no impact to honest consumers. I don't see any downside to that.

 

[ericpol]

how do you figure ms loses money? it forces pirates to buy another system to play online games and probably cuts into sales of used 360's for fear of buying a banned system and not being able to play online. if they were smart they would ban the accounts too forcing them to buy another gold account. I personally think the people getting banned for 3rd party hd's is bs sony lets you install a larger drive and their system hasn't been hacked yet. I mean a software company can't write an os for a gaming system that can't be hacked that makes me feel very safe everytime I boot up windows I'm glad I only use it for gaming.

 

[will_chellam]

apprently ive heard people *have* been banned for upgrading the hard disk themselves - same with replacing the dvd rom drive - apparently the eula states that any non-standard hardware may result in a ban

theyve not found a way to detect those ridiculous moh autofire pads though......

 

[DeeTee_uk]

ericpol - It's normal practice for the console makers to take a hit on the price of the console, so they sell more games. It's the game sales that make the money, so someone buying another console isn't much use.

I was under the impression that this instance was brought about because they were now able to tell who modded their system with the chips that allow pirate software to be used. And anyone who buys a used console only to find it banned, should be going back and throwing it at the people they bought it from. Not fit for purpose.

Anyway, this was about that particular gamer in the article, who admitted to having modded his console to play pirated games. It is people like him I have no sympathy for.

 

[OvrClkr]

You keep saying MS should have used HD or BD, but you do realize that the 360 was released a year before the PS3 and the only reason Sony could do BD was because they had the inside track on it and even then it almost killed the PS3. BD/HD weren't an option for the 360 - not for Microsoft building it and not for it to be released when it did. To put out a console with BD/HD at the time the 360 was released* would have meant a $1000 console and MS still would be taking a hit. Piracy wouldn't be an issue because nobody would have a 360 in the first place.

The PS3s games might cost the same but the console still cost more. Plus Sony had a dog in the fight as far as putting BD in their consoles so it made sense for them to do it. For MS putting BD in their systems would have looked stupid and been of no benefit because it would have meant forfeiting their place as the more affordable next-gen console. Making HD standard would have meant getting involved in a costly format war which they had little stake in and also forfeiting their place as the more affordable next-gen console.


*Besides the 360 being released before HD DVD or Blu Ray were even widely considered by consumers it's not even reasonable to expect that there was any way such a feature could have been planned into the system during the development process. Essentially your looking back with hindsight and criticizing MS for something they did in 2003-2005 from the standpoint of what you know know. It's kind of like telling somebody which horse they should have bet on after the race has finished.

Look, at this point MS could have upgraded thier 360 to run of of BD disks, yea when BD came out it was too expensive to add it to the console while trying to maintain costs down.. But right now a BD player can be found for 49.99$ and that is considered expensive. As time goes by they get cheaper n cheaper so MS should have thought about the pirating issue when it started. Im not saying that it would be a good move for MS to switch disks but they could have done something beforehand to prevent all this mess. Yesterday night I had a friend that does not even know how to pirate a a game and he was having issues with his LIVE account, some strange message that said "'Your console has been banned from Xbox' .... We called support and they fixed the issue but told us that they were getting flooded with calls from legit owners having the exact same issue. This is nonsense IMO, MS is to big of a company to have this crap going on. Do you see PS3 owners complaining? Of course not, Sony made a smart move to go from DVD to BD specifically due to this issue.

 

[purplerat]

Look, at this point MS could have upgraded thier 360 to run of of BD disks, yea when BD came out it was too expensive to add it to the console while trying to maintain costs down.. But right now a BD player can be found for 49.99$ and that is considered expensive. As time goes by they get cheaper n cheaper so MS should have thought about the pirating issue when it started. Im not saying that it would be a good move for MS to switch disks but they could have done something beforehand to prevent all this mess. Yesterday night I had a friend that does not even know how to pirate a a game and he was having issues with his LIVE account, some strange message that said "'Your console has been banned from Xbox' .... We called support and they fixed the issue but told us that they were getting flooded with calls from legit owners having the exact same issue. This is nonsense IMO, MS is to big of a company to have this crap going on. Do you see PS3 owners complaining? Of course not, Sony made a smart move to go from DVD to BD specifically due to this issue.

Upgrading to a different format now would do nothing for this issue because MS would still have to allow for the use of DVDs seeing as they have millions of customers who already own DVD only 360s. What are they going to do, force everybody to buy a BD upgrade - yeah that's real customer friendly.

BD as an anti-piracy measure is a stop-gap solution at best. The only reason BD is less likely to be pirated is because the discs cost more. The only reason the discs cost more is because nobody is using them. The reason nobody is using is because companies like MS have not yet adapted to BD. It's completely circular logic to assume that BD is the answer to piracy. It's only an answer as long as companies like MS don't use it. Once they do it's no longer a viable solution because prices go down and everybody starts pirating with it.

Sony's decision to us BD was not a smart console decision. It was a smart Blu ray decision. BD in the PS3 didn't make the PS3 a better console it made Blu ray a better format. It nearly killed the PS3 and if Toshiba hadn't completely mishandled HD DVD and had to drop out of the format war so quickly it may have ended up that Sony sacrificed the Play Station in favor of Blu ray from a product line standpoint.

I'm not sure what you mean that people don't complain about the PS3. There are lots of complaints about it not that I care one way or another about either console. If you're talking about piracy the only reason the PS3 isn't pirated like the 360 is the same reason why Macs get less viruses than PCs - there is not enough of a user base to warrant the effort.

 

[OvrClkr]

I agree with most of your post but you cannot say that NOBODY is using BD, BD is the future of Movies among other things. BD is what caused HD (disks) to go down under. MS made an HD player for the 360 and that was a huge FLOP. If MS would have incorperated the HD format for all their games we would not be having this discussion ATM. The pirating came way before the 360 hit the sheves, there was a massive pirating issue due to P2P file-sharing. This started back when Napster came out. This is the reason I stated that if MS knew that pirating was eventually going to happen then they could have done something about it.

Look, I have both the 360 and the PS3. When the 360 came out it was HUGE and when the PS3 came out it was HUGE as well, at least for me cause I have been using consoles since the Atari and I love em all. I don't see PS3 ownwers complaining, the PS3 never had anything similar to the red-ring-of death, something that cost MS billions of dollars to fix. The only issue wth the PS3 to this date was the pricetag when it launched. But of course you were getting more so you had to pay more. Free online gaming, the ability to surf the net with ot with or without a keyboard. The ability to watch Blue-Ray disks, install a new hardrive (laptop) no matter what the size, play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games w/o having to install any software whatsoever. Of course the PS3 is not a perfect console, the worst thing that could happen to Sony was that MS was smart enough to make sure their gaming library superior to anything anyone has to offer. I can live with that cause I don't play HALO, GW, Crackdown, Viva Piñata etc..... As I love both systems, my only major complaint is the fact that we have to pay to play online with the 360. MS could have done the same as Sony, I don't see why one would have to pay to play we already shelled out enough cash for the console and the game. Same scenario as WoW an Conan among others.... MS has enough cash to offer free online gaming, I just think Bill and his interns are just to greedy ATM to have that happen.

 

[purplerat]

I don't really care about arguing which console is better or the pros and cons of each. DVD was the only reasonable format for the 360. And the only benefit to BD from an anti-piracy standpoint is a direct result of BD not being a widely used format. For the record I have a BD drive in my PC and love it for movies, but no PC software company is putting out software on BD because there are not enough BD users out there. If more people did use BD it would lose it's anti-piracy benefits almost immediately. So it's a purely circular argument to say BD is a way to prevent piracy. The only benefit to having BD in a console is to watch movies and has nothing to do with preventing piracy. Sony would absolutely trade for more piracy on the PS3 if it meant a wider adaptation of Blu ray. But as of now it's not a widely used format and just has not taken off the way DVD did 10 years ago at the same stage.

This is kind of going off topic but BD is still arguably not the "future" of anything. It's for possible it may end up being a largely unused and unneeded intermediate between generations the same way laser disc was for movies before and the way the Dreamcast was for gaming consoles. I like my Blu ray movies but I honestly see the future as being non-media based digital content (i.e. Streaming/hosted/delivered/etc content) and that future may be sooner than Sony/Blu ray would like.

 

[ericpol]

ericpol - It's normal practice for the console makers to take a hit on the price of the console, so they sell more games. It's the game sales that make the money, so someone buying another console isn't much use.

I was under the impression that this instance was brought about because they were now able to tell who modded their system with the chips that allow pirate software to be used. And anyone who buys a used console only to find it banned, should be going back and throwing it at the people they bought it from. Not fit for purpose.

Anyway, this was about that particular gamer in the article, who admitted to having modded his console to play pirated games. It is people like him I have no sympathy for.

Microsoft doesn't sell games they sell consoles they take a hit in the beginning but parts become cheaper and they start to make money on consoles nobody goes into business to lose money

 

[purplerat]

Microsoft doesn't sell games they sell consoles they take a hit in the beginning but parts become cheaper and they start to make money on consoles nobody goes into business to lose money

MS both sells games and makes money off games other companies sell for their console. I don't know if they ever start turning a real profit on the consoles themselves since as the price of parts go down they also make improvements and lower the price of the system. The point is that the goal of console hardware is to get people buying games, not to make a profit off the hardware itself. It's been that way since the NES.

 

[ulysses35]

MS got greedy at some point because of the cost of buying a console, then the cots of adding a HDD... plus the fee for online game play.

Sony were a little smarter, but because of the high cost of BD discs they dont seem to get the same level of piracy. And to make thing more tricky, you cant download a game then take your HDD to another machine as the next machine will want to format the HDD.

The other reason the Xbox360 is more prone to hackers / modders is because of its close links with PC architecture. Although due to some shoddy HSF design by MS it hasnt been plain sailing RROD stories still circulate regularly)

Bundle the base console with a 100+ GB HDD and makes games require activation like PC games do, but use the DVD drive (similar to securom) to check for a valid legal copy before going on line.

Pirates get everything they deserve.... Cant afford it ? dont play....