Lasse Penttinen
5 Jul 2002 15:30
More worrying for Microsoft than the resurfacing of this particular mod project is the claim that no mod chip at all is required to play pirate games on the Xbox.
A number of our sources have pointed out that in fact, what most Xbox chips in development do is to replace the standard retail Xbox BIOS (the chip on the motherboard which tells the Xbox how to behave when it is powered on or rebooted) with a hacked version of the BIOS found in Xbox development kits – which, of course, will happily boot gold discs, copied DVDs and games from all regions.
This requires no hardware modification to the console – someone with the appropriate equipment can open up the machine, alter the BIOS program in a procedure known as "flashing", and voila – one "chipped" Xbox, except with no chip.
Unlike chipping PS2s, this process is innately illegal since it requires the use of a modified version of Microsoft's BIOS program and the encryption keys held within it, thus constituting a breach of copyright. However, legal issues aside, this loophole in the Xbox's security is a headache for Microsoft and, indeed, for any publisher or developer working on the system. So far, the relative expense of chipping a PS2 (it can cost upwards of £100 to install a Messiah chip) has kept the number of chipped machines to a minimum; however, should Xbox modifications become as cheap and simple as PSone modifications were at the height of that console’s success, a similar level of chipping and hence piracy can be expected.
I think MS is going to pay a big price for using regular PC technology as the platform of the XBox console...
TheRegister