Beware of Cheap Xbox 360 Consoles

[Osiris]

Beware of Cheap Xbox 360 Consoles

Reader Jim Downs passed on this article at Ars Technica about how Xbox 360 consoles banned in the recent crackdown are showing up on the secondary market. While some sellers are up front about the banning, others aren't as forthcoming so be careful, especially when buying from a retailer. Caveat emptor. Thanks Jim!

The problem is that when a retailer like GameStop takes a system in, it at the very most will plug the unit into a television to make sure it works. No one is going to connect the system to an Internet connection to check and see if the console has been banned. You can't tell by looking at it, and if you find yourself in possession of a banned console, Microsoft is going to be unsympathetic to your plight.
​

 

[35g700]

Wow. Id be extremely mad If I bought a console used and it was banned from Xbox LIVE, I guess they need to find a way to show that the thing doesn't work online even if your not connected to the internet.

 

[wafflehammer]

microsoft needs to attache a small explosive onto the CPU of it so if they get banned it explodes and leaves the console dead lol...

but this is stupid :| if someone is selling super cheap and they are up front about it, that's cool..cause some people might not want live or have internet...but *******s that don't tell people are horrible :|

 

[Muffin Man]

wth... how can they ban the console from connecting to xbl?

i thought that just the account accused of piracy was banned. hm, but then again, the person would still be able to just make a new acc and play on xbl again.

well arent all the pirated games and whatnot stored in the hdd? maybe stores could sell used 360's w/o a hdd and then push customers to buy a new hdd. in the end though, i guess it will depend on which way they will end up making more profit from, because its always about the money.

 

[35g700]

wth... how can they ban the console from connecting to xbl?

i thought that just the account accused of piracy was banned. hm, but then again, the person would still be able to just make a new acc and play on xbl again.

well arent all the pirated games and whatnot stored in the hdd? maybe stores could sell used 360's w/o a hdd and then push customers to buy a new hdd. in the end though, i guess it will depend on which way they will end up making more profit from, because its always about the money.

People open their 360 and flash the firmware of their DVD drive so that it can play burned disks which would be pirated disks. If microsoft bans a console from Xbox LIVE they don't look at the hard drive, most likely they look at the MAC address of the console and ban consoles from XBL that have a certain MAC address.

 

[carnageX]

Which could bring to question whether or not you could change the MAC of the 360 or not like you can on computers lol.

On topic though...may have to pick up a 360 for cheap on fleabay now, considering I don't have an intention of getting Live (I don't feel like paying for online).

 

[Muffin Man]

ooh ok. i didnt really know what people actually did to their 360's to allow them to do this. so it looks like in the end, all those people who went along with this and some that payed to get this done all got the short end of the stick, so its not my problem

 

[carnageX]

ooh ok. i didnt really know what people actually did to their 360's to allow them to do this. so it looks like in the end, all those people who went along with this and some that payed to get this done all got the short end of the stick, so its not my problem

Only the short end of the stick if you wanted to use Live lol.

 

[Muffin Man]

oh yea, i guess lol. but i doubt that many of the people, including the ones who did it for mw2 only did it to play single player. id say that the majority wanted the game to play multiplayer but didnt want to pay for it, so thats what they get.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Which could bring to question whether or not you could change the MAC of the 360 or not like you can on computers lol.

On topic though...may have to pick up a 360 for cheap on fleabay now, considering I don't have an intention of getting Live (I don't feel like paying for online).

It is illegial to change burned in macs... But, I am sure that MS does have a mac filter list, allowing only the approved xbox 360s to access the network... But yea, there needs to be an easier way, such as having the 360's HDD bricked, or have the 360, at startup, state, that it is no longer allowed on the XBL network....