First Xbox 360 hack surfaces

360 News | Another 'unhackable' console bites the dust.

Microsoft might have claimed its Xbox 360 was unhackable, but, four months removed from the American launch, a hacking team led by 'The Specialist' has managed to get a pirate copy of Project Gotham Racing 3 running on a hacked machine. To achieve this, the 360 DVD drive had to have the firmware modified (by inserting a modded 360 game, among other things), allowing pirate discs to run as the drive no longer looks for a special code that can only be found on legal discs.

However, 'The Specialist' and his band of merry men won't be distributing their firmware modifications, as they don't support piracy - only legitimate homebrew (which this does not provide), and the challenge of hacking itself. Hmm. Still, now the secret is out, you can bet on people with slightly more dubious morals replicating the process unfortunately. It's worth noting though that this method does NOT bypass region locking.

YouTube has a video online, if you're curious in seeing it in action (or the inside of a 360, for that matter).

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21 Comments

838 La

3 years ago

Everything's Hackable. nuff said

Infested Jibbs

3 years ago

Geez 4 months?

Took em long enough.

onggie

3 years ago

It was bound to happen? I thought it would take a bit longer than 4 months, but hey they have done it. Now they just have to work out how to load the games on the HDD and your done

Denny

3 years ago

Hah, talk about owned.

ZNMS

3 years ago

Interesting. As from the sounds of things, no mod chip is required.

theory

3 years ago

Cool... now I just wanna know if Live will work using burnt games.

James

3 years ago

theory wrote

Cool... now I just wanna know if Live will work using burnt games.

Piracy is bad. It robs the industry of its resources that would be otherwise be used to make more/better games.

As always encouraging piracy on these forums is a bannable offence.

EvilHayama

3 years ago

I suspect that this hack could be detected by an update, they have to change the firmware of the DVD drive, which I'm pretty sure can be checked. Encouraging Live usage is good for MS as it makes it much easier to detect and discourage piracy with dashboard updates and banning. The way of the future!

theory

3 years ago

James wrote

theory wrote

Cool... now I just wanna know if Live will work using burnt games.

Piracy is bad. It robs the industry of its resources that would be otherwise be used to make more/better games.

As always encouraging piracy on these forums is a bannable offence.

Yeah, I wasn't encouraging piracy. I'm just curious as to whether these hackers are as good as they think they are (ie. by being able to run Live using burnt games). Not saying it's a good thing.

James

3 years ago

Yeah, I know you weren't explicitly (hence you're not banned

). I was just pre-empting the posts that might follow.

themak

3 years ago

I think that this is only one step closer to OSX on the XBOX360.
OSX on the Xbox 360 is an extremely good idea.

LeonJ

3 years ago

I don't like piracy at all, epsically when I'm always a good boy and buy DVDs and full priced games and some doodle laughs about having a HDD full of games and stacks of burnt DVDs.

Well that all said, charging $119.95 for a videogame certainly doesn't help the cause. I think $90-100 is a fair price in Australia with the value of the US$ now. I know this is a standard thing at launch from 3rd parties, but it doesn't feel nice handing over $20 more for a game. It is just insanely priced.

Bitchacho

3 years ago

What **** me is that you can import games from US/Asia for considerably less than off-the-shelf games here. What makes it worse is that some games are region free, but many aren't. That's why I'm in love with Nintendo DS atm. Just import games as I please. It takes months and months for a game to have an AUS code printed on the cart, and the OFLC label slapped on the box art.

if x360 was completely region free, that would be awesome. Even better - if there was a universal rating system. a game could have the universal label slapped on it, and be distributed anywhere. what makes australia any different to england or US when it comes to ratings?

k1dcharm

3 years ago

Sign of XBox360 going to boom in Asian market....

Infested Jibbs

3 years ago

Mitch wrote:

Quote

What makes it worse is that some games are region free, but many aren't. That's why I'm in love with Nintendo DS atm. Just import games as I please.

I'm still wary importing ds games as multiplayer compatability between different region versions of the same game is still a grey area.Some say yes they all work, some say most don't, some say most do, some say 'toe-may-toe' some say 'tar-mar-toe'.

I don't wanna get caught being the only guy not able to play mph multi cause i imported early.....

jameseybuddy

3 years ago

Is it just me, or is there no gameplay actually shown in the hack? How do we know the game is playable? It would be so easy to create a video file to do the same thing?

Aron_Lavuk_6666

3 years ago

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha They Finally find one its bad. 4 months it only took me 2 hours to find away to hack my schools comp. That was like 3 years ago got arrested didnt like it i quit. lol