Important: this is just my opinion, and as far as I know, no such system is in place. However if there is such a system, tell me and I'l promote it!
Ok so everybody knows you can crack your xbox 360 so it'll play games from copied discs.
It's cheap, it's Scummy and it happens... alot.
With general hacking there's a 'COOL' element, where we stand in awe at what could be achieved by taking something to bits, flashing the firmware, or installing mods, that's kinda in our nature.
But when that comes to the XBOX 360, it's a big NO!
The Xbox 360 has something, all other gaming consoles lack, do you know what it is...? answer="community"
Whatever games your into, chances are at some point you've played online, and if you've played online more than once you'll probably already have people on your friends list ready to share your favourite games with.
It's open to all people from all over the world and so of course you get a few idiots, but in general you can build up a healthy list of new 'friends'.
Outa this shared gaming experience comes a level of respect for each other, you've all chosen to invest your hard-earned money into this company, and enjoy sharing the experience together. The problem is, we're not all paying are we...?
So yeah we all know the prices are jacked up skyhigh! Especially here in the UK, where games are released around the £50 mark (sometimes more!) so on minimum wage your goin' to have to work for more than 10hours to pay for a game! crazy but that's the climate we live in at the moment.
One of the reasons the prices are so high is that a large percentage of people aren't paying for their games, and so the rest of us have to foot a much heftier bill to pay the way for these idiots. Of course this is illegal, and generally frowned upon, but what is really being done about it? Sure police might catch a few of the major re-sellers who make a living outa burning copies of games and selling them on at £5 a disc, but what about all the people sat at home playing their cracked Xbox's.
I can only afford to have a couple of games at a time, so when i want a new game.... first i have to wait for it to come down from £50 to around £30 (takes bout 2 months) then sell my old games on ebay and use the cash to subsidies the cost of the new game. It really doesn't seem right that people with Cracked Xbox's have every new game, as soon as it's released, pay nothing, and sit their happy that they'll never get caught.
The Solution? .... well I've been thinkin about this issue for years, i guess there are privacy laws stopping Microsoft from spying in on everyone's machines without a reason to be suspicious, and then how do they detect the crack?
So far the best solution I can come up with is
why not have an official Microsoft site, where gamers can submit the gamertags of people they know who have a cracked xbox? I think they under-estimate how many people know someone who has a hacked box, and the general feelings towards the people who don't pay. It's not like we'd have to get personal about it, the submissions could beanonymous and they don't have to submit the persons name or details, just punch in their gamertag and hit submit. Surely Microsoft have all the info they need to take it from there, with every gamertag linked to a MSN passport, and if the account has been live in the past they'll have their address too!
Whatever happens, i really feel something should change, as the current attempts to pursue piracy are falling short, and people aren't scared enough of doing it, as no-one is getting caught.
till i have any new ideas, thats it for now...
any of you guys have suggestions?
