A friend of mine asked me to mod his 360 for him, I made him very aware of the issues it can present. For starters there's always a chance that it could brick your XBox 360 drive, with no fix but a new 360. Not a huge chance, but a chance all the same.HereComesPete wrote:I've always wondered about that. You see copies of big name games floating about for the 360/PS3 but not many. I think they've done quite a good job of stopping cracked/chipped stuff working by being shits and banning accounts if they detect sweepings. I possibly read they can shut down chipped 360's remotely if they connect to live, but I find that a little hard to believe.
In theory, the way it works is that you pop a stealthed firmware onto your Optical drive which allows you to play burned disks (as opposed to pressed/replicated disks). These burned disks are encoded with stealth software, which can be cross referenced with a database on the internets to see if it's 'safe'.
If one is found to be playing pre release or non stelathed games, the console is flagged and will more than likely be banned from XBox Live in the next ban wave (which tend to happen on a sunday, every 3 - 6 months). When someone asks "can I get banned from live for playing swept games?", the answer is often "you will definitely get banned, but you won't know when".
The only way out of the Live ban is to buy a new console, as the ban is linked to the console's serial number. There's no evidence or recorded cases of Microsoft remotely shutting down consoles, chipped or otherwise. If you're not bothered about XBox Live then you'd likely be fine, if you play online often I would steer well clear of modding/chipping etc. Live banned consoles still work, still play real and replicated games, but you'll never be able to play online or download content/patches etc.
As far as I know, Microsoft haven't yet banned a console that's been firmware modded, but never used to play burned or pre release games, but I could be wrong.
All this is coming from an essay I did for Uni last year, fascinating subject.
