At first glance, this story probably will inspire a lot of "duh, so what" responses. After all, modchips are used to do lots of things to your Xbox console, nearly all of which Microsoft doesn't want you to do.
They can let you play illegally copied games. They can let you modify your Xbox in ways that permit cheating on Xbox Live (although for the most part it can't stop them from detecting you). It can also let you run unrelated software on your Xbox, such as the Linux operating system, turning it into a codec-agnostic media player or even a budget PC. Neither of those things generate additional post-sale revenue to Microsoft, and some even make the company look bad (hee, hee! Linux on an Xbox!) or could draw the ire of organizations like the RIAA towards Microsoft if they are seen as contributing to infringement by, say, supporting codecs like DivX which are alleged to be used primarily for pirating video.
So what's not surprising is Ozymandias' latest blog entry where he details the reasons why Xbox owners might mod their box and the reasons why he can't "condone" it. He completely bypasses the cheating issue and never once mentions Xbox Live, so I'll also leave that mostly out of this. He does propose three reasons why he can imagine someone might mod an Xbox:
- the ability to copy and play pirated games
- the ability to play import games
- the ability to add new functionality (such as running homebrew software)
Nobody reasonable is going to argue that easy access to pirated games is bad for Microsoft, bad for the platform, and bad for deveopers. No one is going to expect Microsoft to condone using a modchip for this purpose.
Where this goes wrong is when Ozymandias decides he needs to pile on the piracy issue and make a lot of the same bogus generalizations that have been thrown around for the better part of two and a half decades now.
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