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Comments: 435 +- Hardware: Xbox 360 Update Will Lock Out Unauthorized Storage on Monday October 19, @03:20PM
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itwbennett writes "The other shoe has dropped on the upcoming preview program for the next Xbox 360 update and it's going to cost you. In a post on the Major Nelson blog, Xbox's Larry Hryb reveals that this next update will lock-out unauthorized storage devices. As blogger Peter Smith reminds us, 'the Xbox 360 comes in two (currently) SKUs, one with a hard drive, and one without. The drive-less Xbox 360 Arcade unit is cheap ($199) but to realistically use it, you'll need to buy a "Memory Unit" (basically a proprietary USB stick) or an Xbox hard drive.... A 512 MB Microsoft branded Memory Unit goes for $29.99 at BestBuy.com. A 2 GB third party Memory Unit from Datel goes for $39.99, and the Datel unit is expandable using microSD cards....If you bought the Datel and it's full of data, between now and the launch of the new update you're going to have to run out and buy 4 of the Microsoft units at $29.99 each, or more likely, pick up the $99.99 60GB Live Starter Pack for Xbox 360.'"
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Or 120GB for $54.99 (Score:5, Interesting)
... or more likely, pick up the $99.99 60GB Live Starter Pack for Xbox 360.
Or (in an even more likely scenario if you're reading Slashdot) you will opt to do it yourself [pcworld.com] to get twice that storage for a little over half the cost [newegg.com]. This is, of course, assuming that locking out "unauthorized storage" does not also target in some crazy way locking out hard drives.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is, of course, assuming that locking out "unauthorized storage" does not also target in some crazy way locking out hard drives.
You know the old saying about what happens when you ASSUME, right?
Unless it's an official licensed XBOX device, by definition its an "unauthorized storage" device. Therefore these hard drives that you suggest buying from Newegg will also be locked out when this new update arrives.
Re:Or 120GB for $54.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Consoles have always been a locked down device versus the openness of PC. I dont know why people are surprised when this kind of stuff happens.
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Re:Or 120GB for $54.99 (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Excuse me?
Some consoles actually are a fair bit more open than others. [playstation.com]
Re:Or 120GB for $54.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Or 120GB for $54.99 (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right about the OS for gaming (but the less honest guys can probably find a pirated XP Corporate Edition).
That still doesn't solve the problem. You actually have to buy games on alternative OSes so that game developers target them more often. If you just pirate Windows, you are still enforcing the "Windows for Gaming Platform" because developers will continue to make games for Windows. Other people around the world will see this and continue to buy Windows, thus keeping the circle alive.
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It's a good replacement unit (Score:5, Informative)
My four year old X360 died two months ago. Not a Red Ring Of Death, it went completely inert. No light at all. Swapping the power brick with a couple borrowed ones confirmed the unit failure. I had upgraded it to a 120G official MS hard drive a year ago.
I bought the arcade unit because [1] I could just plug the old hard drive into it and [2] as far as I could determine it was the model with the latest, greatest chip set that had all known issues solved. Works great.
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Re:It's a good replacement unit (Score:5, Insightful)
I always thought one of the arguments for going console was that this was never going to be an issue?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
He's referring to slight redesigns (and a smaller fab process) that makes the box run cooler and significantly reduces most of the RRoD failures. It still functions in the same way as the older devices.
What you're referring to is not having to upgrade components, I think. A 360 is a 360 is a 360, and you don't have to check to make sure that yours has the right graphics card in order to know that a particular game will work on it. You need the right peripherals, of course, and if Project Natal takes off,
Re:Or 120GB for $54.99 (Score:5, Interesting)
With that being said, I must give Sony and Nintendo credit, PS3 supports any USB storage or 2.5" SATA (I have 500GB) thats formatted in FAT32 (nobody's perfect) while Nintendo supports any model SD cards up to 32GB SDHC which is "good enough" for the Wii.
I see this path going down the same way the controllers did
History lesson: since 3rd party controllers have died out they have doubled in price or more(at least in Australia. Even as far as last gen a wireless Gamecube controller 3rd party was $AU30, regular Gamecube, Xbox and PS2 controllers were about the same price both official and 3rd party.
Current prices:
360 Controller $AU64
Wiimote = $AU60, Nunchuck = $AU27, so for a usable control system thats $AU87 Dualshock 3 = $AU99
Prices may vary depending how well you shop around but you get my point. They are all way above the origional $30 price point for an extra controller.
I wonder if Microsoft are trying to plan the same fate for memory cards.
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Re:Or 120GB for $54.99 (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They ship with different brands of drives right now, western digital ones are the only ones that can currently have their firmware spoofed and security sector rewritten with an all-in-one tool (HddHackr). As of version 1.00 it supports:
- WD Scorpio Series BEVS/BEAS
- WD Scorpio Blue Series BEVS/BEVT
- WD Scorpio Black Series BEKT/BJKT
- WD VelociRaptor Series
I just bought a BEKT so I can have a nice 7200 rpm drive assuming they aren't about
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think it's bad on consoles, you should consider how bad it is on PCs... most of the games require you to have Microsoft Windows installed. At least on consoles, you have the choice of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo's offerings.
oh Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
Audacious. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they weren't confident of their position, and were actively trying to drive down the perceived cost of their product, storage would be a natural target. Just let people use bog-standard flash drives for game storage, and the market will continually release cheaper ones faster than any one company could even do design revisions. Same basic idea with basic HDDs. The fact that Microsoft isn't doing that suggests that they are very confident in their price point.
As for downloads, if Microsoft were making good money on those, they would want users to have huge hard drives, rather than limping along on a nasty little 512meg card. Again, they don't seem to be thus motivated.
Re:Audacious. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Audacious. (Score:4, Interesting)
But that $50 price may double over the next few years, according to financial analysts. [...] "I doubt that MS would start raising the price of XBL, they have to compete against the PSN which is free and has all the same features. What ever you may think of MS they are not stupid," said another.
I personally doubt MS will increase the cost given they keep adding marketing features to the dashboard. I think they're more likely to look for added revenue via paid marketing and other 'premium downloads' type marketing much like we're beginning to see (such as the the "avatar marketplace").
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Re:Audacious. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. A 512 MB card shouldn't cost more than $5 right now, while a 2G card should be under $20. They're nickel and diming their customers in the wrong places. If I could buy a nice 100 GB hard disk for $50, I would not only spring for that, but also download far more content - which in turn would drive up my perceived value of the system.
Instead, I'm getting the impression that I'm being fleeced every time I want to do something useful. Maybe that PS3 isn't such a bad idea after all.
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Re:Audacious. (Score:5, Insightful)
What they should be doing is selling storage for the inflated prices but including download credits for a good chunk of the purchase price of the storage. Charging $99.99 for the 60G product would seem more reasonable if it came with a ~$75 code that could be used to purchase downloads since it would lower the apparent cost of the physical object to $24.99 while not lowering MS's profit on the product by all that much.
It would have the added benefit of getting people in the habit of purchasing downloads.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree wholeheartedly and have an anecdote to boot.
I have an Xbox 360. I copied Mass Effect onto the Xbox 360 so that it would load and run faster. I then proceeded to 'rent' a movie (Troy) in HD. It took around 30 minutes to be able to get Xbox to accept one of my credit cards (incidentally no feedback was ever given as to why it was rejecting them). Finally, the Xbox accepted a credit card I rented the movie and it refused to download because I lacked space. So I started deleting all the "little" games a
Re:Audacious. (Score:5, Insightful)
See, I think the exact opposite.
I think they see downloadable offerings as almost their entire future, and I think this activity is not centered around squeezing people for storage, but about maintaining control over storage options, to make sure every storage option has DRM support deep in their bones.
Microsoft does want everyone to have humungous hard drives. They just want to make sure that those hard drives are theirs, so they can build DRM into the storage at multiple levels, to prevent piracy of the downloaded content. Otherwise the level of piracy might approach that on the PC, and, well, better to go out of business than to tolerate that.
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Anti-competitive (Score:5, Insightful)
Locking out the competitor's product should be illegal. If you can't compete because your product is overpriced, you shouldn't be propped up. Yes that may mean that people have to pay the true cost of a console or printer or other device, as it isn't subsidised by content/ink etc. It's called honesty. Manufacturers should try it some time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Absolutely not. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Absolutely not. (Score:5, Informative)
I can't create a car that artificially locks out 3rd party replacement parts and upgrades... why should Microsoft be able to create a gaming box that does the same thing?
Actually the auto makers have been trying to essentially do that by denying training and key software to independent garages. story here [theglobeandmail.com]
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Re:Absolutely not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Next thing you know, you'd have to hold your competitor's hand, work together on some product, watch your own share evaporate....
I call B.S. We're talking about commodity storage hardware; there's no excuse. MS is going out of their way to shut off access to otherwise compatible and standards compliant storage options. Moreover, there's a long history of third party storage for various platforms, e.g. the various "multi-memory" cartridges for the PS1, etc. In this case, these are bog-standard memory cards and drives, not even the proprietary exotica that third-party PS1 memory makers had to contend with.
As to the comments that "it's a locked down console platform", the digital camera market (esp. pro- and semi-pro dSLRs) is probably more mission-critical in terms of stability expectations than the console market. Yet the major digicam makers haven't done anything so daft as to lock themselves down to a few SKUs of memory cards.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, syousef, you could launch your own game platform company and open up you game console to 3rd party storage.
Yes I'll just quit my job, risk my family income etc. No problem. Why didn't I think of that?
Is this right? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can buy 60GB for $99 or "stick it to the man" by paying $29 for a 2GB third party device?
Misinformation (Score:3, Informative)
The drive-less Xbox 360 Arcade unit is cheap ($199) but to realistically use it, you'll need to buy a "Memory Unit" (basically a proprietary USB stick) or an Xbox hard drive.... A 512 MB Microsoft branded Memory Unit goes for $29.99 at BestBuy.com.
The current version of the Arcade comes with 512M internal memory, so throw this whole statement out the window.
This will kill them (Score:4, Insightful)
This will kill them in the battle against the PS3. Sony make it so easy, for a start every PS3 comes with a hard drive, so games developers can assume that there is bulk persistent storage there and take advantage of it. You can also use USB mass storage devices. You can also upgrade the internal hard drive with undoing just a couple of screws, and it's all supported.
Sony have an easy way for you to back up your PS3 to an external USB hard drive, you then insert any laptop hard drive (I went with a 7.2k one and some things are noticeably faster) and you then restore your system onto the new hard drive. All without paying Sony an extra cent.
Is is legal to remove functions after purchase? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are all sorts of arguments made about software because we're typically sold licences, not an actual copy of the software. But in cases like this, we've actually bought a physical object. It's now ours, not the manufacturer's. So do they really still have the legal right to reach out an remove features? They advertised a function, which it now doesn't have. It feels like a sort of retroactive false advertising. A lot of Xbox owners will now need to spend extra money simply to restore the original functions; if they'd known this was necessary before purchase they might only have been willing to buy the XBox at a correspondingly lower price, if at all. So as MS have changed their end of this bargain, surely their customers should have the right to change theirs? A partial refund (to represent a lower original price) or the option of a full refund both seem fair to me,
I know people can, in principle, unplug their XBox to avoid accepting this update but then, again, they're losing the functionality that was originally advertised and that they originally paid for. Does this seem fair to anyone? Does it seem legal?
Re:Is is legal to remove functions after purchase? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Small Monthly Fees, Get Used to It (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the wave of the future with all devices.
You don't need to upgrade it yourself, let Microsoft give you storage, for a "small monthly fee".
Next will be, you don't need to "own" a PC, or software, rent it, for a couple of "small monthly fees"
Let someone else manage your data, for a small monthly fee.
Let someone else update your programs, for a small monthly fee.
Let someone else manage the hardware, for a small monthly fee.
You will pay your "small monthly fees" and you will get NO WARRANTY, NO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NO RECOURSE, NO REFUNDS, and NO SECURITY.
Most of the caps text is taken from the license agreement from most 'online only' software.
Think it won't work? It already does.
You don't "own" your cellphone, SIM card, or it's data. You simply rent it, for a "small monthly fee".
Good luck selling any of it, getting a decent warranty, or being able to cancel your contract.
Small Monthly Fees, get used to paying them , for everything.
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
PCs still work the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trash the X-box ... Starcraft 2 will be here so (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm so sick of this proprietary crap.
So you go for the game with no LAN play that you have to connect to proprietary Blizzard Servers? At least consoles give you little to no expectation of openness.
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PS3.. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:PS3.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Xbox 360 allows you to use any standard handsfree headset and any standard USB drive for storing media. They only restrict the game accessible media.
I try to avoid these discussions, but I can't resist:
You mean with an Xbox 360 you can rip a CD to the hard drive using the built-in optical reader, dump the resultant MP3s into a bog-standard USB flash device, and then plug that into your car stereo and play the music?
No? Bummer. The PS3 does that just fine.
Or, perhaps you mean that with an Xbox, you can back up your save games to any old USB drive.
No? Such a shame. The PS3 does that just fine, too.
Not to be snide, but I always got a kick out of my brother-in-law removing the hard drive from his 360 so he could take his save games to a friend's house. And then I started to feel pretty sad for him as I watched him try, at length, to offload a couple of MP3s, only to end with failure.
So, in my experience, the Xbox 360 is like a black hole when it comes to data -- once it's in there, there's no escape.
That sure is "open".
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Re:And the band played on... (Score:5, Insightful)
What monopoly? I walk into the living room and see a Wii. Are you sure Microsoft has a monopoly on video games?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not monopoly, anti-competitive. I see a lawsuit here. Typically stepping on your competition like this gets you in some trouble.
Re:And the band played on... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Monopoly" or "Market Share", the DMCA doesn't make distinctions about either before branding circumvention a criminal act.
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Re:And the band played on... (Score:5, Insightful)
And what of the remainder of the XBOX Live Gold subscription? As this gets sprung upon unanticipating subscribers, can they then opt out of their Live contract and thus regain access to their unauthorized storage, or is upgrading giving Microsoft a permanent foothold in your hardware free to exert any terms they want, including bricking the hardware if you don't take it on-line for remote auditing often enough?
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The Pre could have used supported APIs. (Score:3, Informative)
Apple isn't blocking the Pre from working with iTunes. Apple is blocking the Pre from working with iTunes by pretending it's an iPod. If Palm had used supported APIs (say, by letting you create a "Palm Pre" playlist and then reading the songs from that playlist to sync to the Pre) there wouldn't be a problem. Palm cheaped out to avoid having to write their own sync application (which is crazy, because they made the best handheld sync I've ever used) and used a hack instead.
People expect publishers to lock o
Re:The Pre could have used supported APIs. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:And the slant comes out (Score:4, Informative)
Not at first. They switched to using the iPod/iPhone USB identifier only because Apple blocked the Pre from using iTunes...
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Re:And the slant comes out (Score:4, Informative)
They switched to using the iPod/iPhone USB identifier only because Apple blocked the Pre from using iTunes...
They were using the iPod/iPhone USB identifier from the start. That's how their sync hack worked.
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Re:Unauthorized? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because a company can make a product that works with another companies device, the device manufacturer is under no obligation to support it.
Not supporting it is fine and dandy, but using artificial means to restrict perfectly legal devices that have always worked before to make more money is abusive and consumers should be nothing less than insulted.
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Re:Arcade comes with 512MB (Score:4, Informative)
It's not random, it's very calculated. Microsoft is getting tired of people coming out with products cheaper than they are, and so they're going to lock them out, and file it under 'For Your Protection' after saying that using unauthorized memory cards rapes your children and kills your pets. I can't stand how entitled the game companies think they are to push an update to remove features.
What if World of Warcraft released a patch that removed all support for non-Blizzard-sanctioned input hardware?
What if Ford decided that your warranty was void because you used non-Ford wipers? (Oh, wait, the law protects us against that..)
What if printers didn't let you use unauthorized print cartridges? (Oh, wait, they don't..)
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