modchips
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Wii Warm Up: Your thoughts on piracy
We've heard a lot about piracy lately, from the seizure of modchips to GameCube games being sold under the Wii label, but one thing we haven't heard is what you think of the whole deal. Like most gamers, we're pretty firmly against pirated games, but modchips tend to send things into a gray area for a lot of the community. Should some modding be okay? Is there any way to draw the line and prevent piracy while allowing some mods? Do you even think there should be?
Federal modchip raid spans 16 US states
The video game industry's war against enemy solders continues unabated, with 16 U.S. states recently becoming legal battlegrounds for federal customs agents working under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement group. According to the New York Times, more than 30 businesses and homes were raided in search of illegal modification chips and far more sinister sounding copyright circumvention devices. The groups and individuals targeted are suspected of importing, installing, distributing and smuggling devices which allow pirated games to be played on PlayStation 2, Wii and Xbox consoles. The pirates asking where all the ROM has gone should cast their functional eyes toward Nintendo -- the company notes in a separate press release that it fully supports the sinking of illegal chips. "Nintendo and its developers and publishers lost an estimated $762 million in sales in 2006 due to piracy of its products," said Jodi Daugherty, senior director of anti-piracy at Nintendo of America. "Nintendo's anti-piracy team works closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to seize mod chips and counterfeit software. Since April, Nintendo has seized more than 91,000 counterfeit Wii discs globally." Friendlier seas won't be found with Nintendo's competitors either. Last month, Sony promised to "aggressively pursue" PS3 pirates and in May, Microsoft gave modified systems the boot from its Xbox Live service.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in. Commence "eye patches are for night vision" commentary.]
Pirates rule the Philippine seas
After a tour of the country last year, Indian President Abdul Kalam described the Philippines as a "smiling republic." Wherever he went, Kalam was met with smiling faces. Well, you'd be grinning too if you saw how cheap their games are. Thanks to the black market, popular Nintendo Wii titles are priced as low as $5 in some shops. Piracy has become so widespread in the Southeast Asian country, even Sony admits that most of its Playstation software sold in the Philippines are bootlegged copies.Filipino site GameOPS found that many stores also offer modchip installations. For about $51, you can have your system hacked to play these counterfeit games at the local mall or market. Furthermore, some shops advertise console bundles, selling imported and modded US Wiis with five copied games of your choice for around $450. Similar deals for chipped Xbox 360 systems with 10 pirated titles are actually cheaper at $388.With such a high level of piracy already in place, Nintendo will have a lot to work against when -- or if -- it decides to finally launch the Wii in the Philippines.
Solderless Wii modchips on the way?
If you've been curious about fixing your Wii to dabble with homebrew or play titles from other regions, but don't trust your abilities enough to mess with the console's innards, there might be a solution in the works for you. WiiNewz forum member Takrin recently posted photos of his hardware project in progress, a prototype modchip that requires no soldering to install. With nothing to attach the modchip to though, how does it stay in place? Takrin suggests "double sided tape on one side" and "foam which presses it to your drive on the other." That doesn't sound like a very stable setup, but we hope to see this development spawn more sophisticated and accessible mods in the future. To be honest, if a monkey can't install it, we probably wouldn't be able to either. [Via MaxConsole]
Nintendo Europe: say no to mod chips
In keeping up with the times, Nintendo Europe has published a public service announcement informing its faithful readers about the dangers of modification microchips, known on the street as mod chips. Mothers, lock up your daughters, this could get serious.As explained by the article, mod chips can require you to dismantle and reassemble your Nintendo hardware, "circumvent" the embedded security, cause cancer* and can get you arrested for illegal activity (except in Australia, where modding is perfectly legal).Even more important to Nintendo, though not explicitly stated, is how mod chips could harm its business. Aside from allowing players to circumvent region locks, many mod chips allow you to play games you have downloaded and burned onto a disc -- even games released for the latest consoles. It should be noted that mod chips are different than case modding, which does not change the inherent functionality -- you may void the warranty, but you certainly won't be handcuffed. Ben Heck, you're in the clear, but you've lost that "bad boy criminal" pick up lines you so often use at parties.* Not confirmed; tests are currently being conducted to verify the correlation between cancer and mod chips.[Via Go Nintendo]
Wii piracy in China is serious business
And we're not being sarcastic at all. Apparently, when the Wii was introduced into the market in Shanghai, it retailed for a price of 3,000 Yuan, which comes to about $388 USD (we could be wrong, apparently there are different types of Yuan over there). Shortly after that, the consoles started showing up with modchips built into them and Japanese consoles imported into the region dropped their price to 2,100 Yuan, which is about $271 USD. Even worse, pirated games could be found VERY cheap over there, only costing 10 Yuan, or little over $1 USD.The price for a console over there has shot back up to 3,000 Yuan again, which is likely due to the demand for the system being skyrocketed by the cheap solutions the piracy scene offers over there. This, of course, will definitely attract Nintendo's attention, hopefully causing the company to take action. But really, what action can they take?See also: Wii circuitry changed to thwart modchips?
Nintendo reportedly planning another Modchip-busting revision
Even though there's no love lost between Sony and Nintendo fanboys, the two ancient rivals may soon have one thing in common: an ongoing battle with their respective deities over modding their precious consoles for homebrew. PSP owners are well aware of the epic back-and-forth struggle between hackers like Fanjita and Dark_Alex and the obviously-frustrated firmware programmers over at Sony, and now DigiTimes (they of the rather dubious Apple rumor track record, mind you) is reporting that Wii lovers may soon be faced with yet another round of modchip-nullifying hardware revisions from Nintendo. The good news is that -- as usual -- the altered circuit layout shouldn't thwart modders for more than a few weeks at most, even if Nintendo decides to move over to so-called ball grid array IC packaging according to "providers of Wii modification services in Taiwan." Still, if these rumors turn out to be true, it would seem that Nintendo is pretty committed to tripping up the Wiinjas and TeamCyclopses of the world, and making your choice of their wares just a little more difficult.
Crisis averted: CycloWiz now works with all Wii chipsets
We were a little afeared for the burgeoning Wii modchip community with the revelation that the current crop of Wii modchips wouldn't work on the newer Wii systems running the D2B Panasonic chipset, but have no fear, TeamCyclops has already cleared that hurdle with a new version of its CycloWiz chip. So if you've been holding off on purchasing a modchip to make certain sure it could run on your shiny new Wii, it looks like you're in the clear. Now if it could only handle Wii imports...[Via DCEmu]
Wii modchips hit a snag, won't work with some recent Wiis
This 1st generation of Wii modchips was humming along so smoothly, but it looks like a recent Nintendo manufacturing modification has rained on their parade for the time being. While the chips do work fine in early Wiis, and that DVD upgradability should keep 'em humming for some time to come, the Wiinja, CycloWiz and WiiKey chips all fail to work with Wiis running the D2B Panasonic chipset, which shows up in certain Wiis, mostly ones purchased in late January / early February. The only way to check for the chipset is to pry open the Wii and look for yourself, and the incompatibility means that even the DVD upgradability won't allow current modchips to run on these systems. Both the CycloWiz and Wiinja teams have confirmed the problem, and are already working on new versions to get around the Panasonic chipset, but you might want to make sure your Wii is compatible before you blow your cash on a non-working modchip.[Thanks, waruwaru]
Sony busts down mod-chip retailer with $9 mil. lawsuit
Everybody's favorite far-reaching, possibly free speech-infringing law, the DMCA, is being put to use again for busting down on Divineo, a seller of mod-chips. Sony has slapped them with a $9 million lawsuit for selling the chips, along with HDLoader, which allows a PS2 to rip games and store them to a HDD for "jukebox" access. Until recently, Divineo was selling a whole bevy of Xbox, Xbox 360, PSOne, PS2, GameCube and other system mod-chips. They've also got other slightly more innocuous devices like that snazzy 4GB DS-Xtreme which gives you homebrew action on the DS without any hacking. Though, we're not sure such attempts of theirs at semi-legibility will do much to appease Sony. There's no official response from Divineo yet, but since they're a France-based company, it seems like the best Sony can do with the DMCA is get them out of the states. The last time we saw the DMCA in action like this, a trio of Xbox modders were facing up to 5 years of prison time, but they ended up with just a few years of probation, and one of 'em got slapped with 6 months of home detention, Martha Stewart-style. They also had to pay $2,600 to the ESA, so it really seems like Sony has decided to up the stakes for Divineo's offenses. Interestingly, while those Xbox modders were loading cracked games galore onto the boxes of customers, Divineo only sells tools that make piracy possible -- interesting indeed.
Xbox modder becomes a fugitive, one-armed man stays out of it
Jason Jones, the upstanding proprietor of one ACME Game Store, thought he was experiencing just another day in the booming, illegally modded Xbox retail market (and not the coyote-pandering dynamite and rocket shoes market, as you may have incorrectly anticipated). Little did he know that his latest customer, one with suspiciously long arms, had unseen motives that eventually led to the law knocking on the door. An undercover investigator for the Entertainment Software Association (they have those?) made sure that Mr. Jones and his accomplice, Jonathan Bryant, were rightly punished for selling chipped Xbox consoles, each one loaded with over 50 pirated games and selling for between $225 and $500. In addition to being slapped with a fine of $2,648 by the ESA, Mr. Jones will be equipped with an electronic bracelet and confined to his home. Should he attempt to leave, the bracelet will let out a high-pitched yelp and large men with guns will promptly arrive and shove him back into his room. A third modder, Pei "Patrick" Cai, evaded this horrendous fate by becoming a full-fledged fugitive. It's not nearly as dramatic as being on the run for murder, but police have nevertheless been advised to keep an eye out for a shifty looking fellow with a chip on his solder. (OOF!)
Firmware hack sets sail?
So much for the hacker code of ethics regarding that fabled firmware hack. Modchip maker TeamXecuter says they (or someone else) will release what those landlubbers in the Netherlands won't: We have made some progress with a new read/patch/write app and no doubt you will all be plugging in your drives to your PC and having some fun shortly - all for free too as no modchips required (and yes we still want to play!)Here is what we envisage...Connect Xbox 360 DVD-ROM to PCApp to update firmware with magic codeConnect DVD-ROM back to 360 - and away you go...Obviousley the only use for this is piracy - hence you wont see any modchips (not from us at least - however they wouldn't be needed anyway - however we do have a few cheap tools to make life much easier - more on that soon) Still a long long way off from unsigned code - but it's a start....Thanks to The Specialist for reviving the scene! We understand he doesn't want to release anything due to possible backlash - but there are many of us who would - and will.Keep your eyes on our 360 forums for updates..... Arrrrrr, score one for shivered timbers and moral relativism. TeamXecuter is directing people toward something that looks an awful lot like a DVD drive hacking tutorial, if you're clever enough to understand all the ones and zeros. Update: From the comments: Curry from Xboxic notes that firmware hacker Robinsod (not from the Netherlands) laughed at TeamXecuter's "wildly inaccurate" claims during his interview and said this is going to lead to alot of amateurs with bricked 360s. TeamXecuter says they're not trying to take credit for anybody's work and and that "flamers and bitchers should stfu."
360 firmware hackers speak
The curious minds behind that DVD firmware hack are giving interviews. Xboxic had a chit chat with hacker Robinsod and posted a helpful summary of what they learned: The hack is completely unfit to be applied to a modchip. Anyone selling a modchip based on this is a scammer. Trying to replicate the hack without having multiple years of experience at this kind of things will most certainly brick your 360. Microsoft will quite probably be able to detect fake firmwares very soon as the cat/mouse game commences so you will get your ass kicked out of Xbox Live for the rest of your life. Watch out for brickware. Some moron will release one probably. Robinsod also answers the skeptics who think their "video proof" is a fake. Meanwhile, TheSpecialist talked to a Dutch Xbox site (translated here) and said pretty much the same thing. Both of these guys say that "hacker ethics" and fear of legal action prevent them from making the full details of their work public.
