Microsoft Banning Modded Xbox 360 Consoles

icrosoft has gone ahead with its plan to ban from the Xbox Live service those users that have modified their gaming consoles and are using it in order to run pirated videogames. The move comes as more and more developers, as revealed by a survey from TIGA, are saying that they are afraid of the impact piracy can have on their businesses and are actually looking for new ideas, like digital distribution and free-to-play models, in order to combat it.

A representative of Microsoft told Gamesindustry.biz that “We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles have been modified to play pirated game discs. In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox Live community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox Live.” Why anyone is using a modded console actually registered to access Xbox Live is another question.

The software giant has refused to actually say how many consoles were banned but some are speculating that the number is close to 600,000 accounts, which is significant. Getting banned from using Xbox Live means that players will not be able to actually engage in multiplayer matches or socialize with their friends who are also playing on the Microsoft home console. The recent ban might be connected with the release of Modern Warfare 2, a game that is an obvious target for pirates because of its blockbuster nature.

Another company that has recently stepped up its anti modding measures is Nintendo. The popular DS handheld is easily modded with the R4 chip, which is widely available. The Japanese console manufacturer is aiming to make the mod chip illegal in a number of territories and it is also pressuring manufacturers and distributors with legal action.

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Microsoft's 720p requirement for developers dropped

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It seems that the Xbox 360 requirement that games be presented in at least 720p has been "retired" by Microsoft. The news has come about thanks to Black Rock's technical director David Jefferies in a guest article he wrote for online magazine Develop. The reasoning for this decision? It will allow developers to create games with better image quality that won't be sacrificed to meet higher resolution requirements.

HD TV manufacturers have been making their 720p LCD televisions with resolutions different than true 1280x720. "The lovingly crafted 1280x720 image has gone to be replaced," says Jefferies, "by something dependent on the quality of the LCD scaler." Because of this scaling, game visuals are upsampled by TV hardware, no matter how good the graphics actually are.

As a result, developers' work to create 720p graphics are a superfluous effort; by dropping the requirement, though, Jefferies claims that developers can add visual features like extra anti-aliasing to make the image actually look better, even if it's presented at a lower resolution than 720p.

According to Jefferies, "If we instead assume that the LCD is going to rescale then, for some games, it might be more sensible to present it with a better anti-aliased but lower resolution image in the first place." Jefferies also explained that the requirement was originally waived for Halo 3, which was presented at a resolution of 1152x640.

However, the problem with LCD TVs upsampling 720p games probably won't be such a hassle in the future: "As more and more LCDs ship with the full HD resolution of 1920x1080 then this will become less of an issue, but I’ve just had a look on Amazon and all the 26" and 32" Sony and Samsung TVs are still 1366x768."


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