theodp writes “In the world of virtual goods, reports GeekWire’s Todd Bishop, it looks like there’s no such thing as a Second Amendment. According to a forum post by an Epic Games community manager, a new policy will remove ‘gun-like’ items from Microsoft’s Xbox Live Avatar Marketplace on January 1. The policy reportedly applies to accessories for the avatars that represent Xbox Live users, not to games themselves, and owners of virtual weaponry like the Gears of War 3 Avatar Lancer purchased before the policy goes into effect will be permitted to continue to wield them.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
walshy007 writes “A new exploit has been shown which allows unsigned code execution on the Xbox 360 for all current models. It functions by pulsing the reset pin at a critical time during the checksumming/crypto boot process.
The exploit enables the running of Xell, a boot loader which facilitates the running of Linux, amongst other programs.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An article at the Opposable Thumbs blog examines the Xbox Live Indie Games economy, finding that developers are having trouble making enough money to justify continued work with the platform. Quoting:
“If you want to publish a console video game, there’s no easier route than the Xbox Live Indie Games program. But while it’s relatively easy to get your game on the service, it’s hard to get it noticed. There’s a lot of junk on XBLIG, so much so that a group of developers banded together at the end of last year to promote quality indie titles. There have been success stories—like the recently released FortressCraft, which managed to sell 16,000 units on the day of release—but they’re not exactly common. So with virtually no promotion, and with average earnings of just $3,800 per title, why do developers continue to create games for the platform? …virtually all of the developers we spoke to are considering moving on from the platform. But all seem to view their experience as valuable, which in the end is part of the point of XBLIG: it’s a place where virtually anyone can make a game that can be played on a console. Devs just need to know what they’re getting into.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Several readers have tipped news of firmware updates causing problems for both Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The Xbox issue was caused by a recent update thought to be preparing the platform for a new disc format that gives developers another 1GB or so of space to work with. As it turns out, the real purpose seems to be piracy countermeasures. Microsoft acknowledged the issue and promised that affected users would receive a new 360S console and a free year of Xbox Live to compensate. The PS3 problem was highlighted by reports of overheating consoles while playing L.A. Noire on the recently-released 3.61 firmware. Rockstar Games initially confirmed that the firmware was causing the overheating, but later backtracked. They issued a joint statement with Sony saying that neither the game nor the firmware was the culprit, leaving users wondering what else it could be.
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Published by
timothy on
May 19, 2011
An anonymous reader writes “After more than a year of development we are pleased to announce stable version 3.0.1 [download via torrent] of the popular media center platform XBMC for the 1st generation XBOX — now called XBMC4XBOX. A huge amount of work has been put into this, and it features numerous additions and improvements over the last release. For those that want a cheap functional media center with some old hardware they might have lying around, this is a superb option.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Two weeks ago we discussed news that some indie developers had found a way to manipulate ratings for their games on Xbox Live. Now, Microsoft has amended the rating rules so that only Xbox Live Gold members can rate such games through the service’s website.
“By implementing this change, we believe our customers will experience more consistent ratings and a significantly reduced potential for abuse across the entire Xbox catalog. We have also investigated rolling back suspect votes, however, we determined it will not be possible to do this. In addition, we are investigating users who may have violated their user agreement during this series of events.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “Microsoft seems to be turning a blind eye to the Xbox Live Indie game area. Certain indie developers have found a way to abuse the independent game ranking system in order to down-vote popular indie titles while up-voting their own. Due to this, games are falling out of the valuable top 20 slot and the value of the ranking system is jeopardized.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “Microsoft seems to be turning a blind eye to the Xbox Live Indie game area. Certain indie developers have found a way to abuse the independent game ranking system in order to down-vote popular indie titles while up-voting their own. Due to this, games are falling out of the valuable top 20 slot and the value of the ranking system is jeopardized.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Save and Quit blog reports that a group of hackers figured out the algorithm behind a set of promotional codes that were each redeemable for 160 MS points, the currency used on Xbox Live. Quoting:
“A person would just have to sit back and refresh over and over and rack up the 160MSP codes. Not every code would work, but a majority would. The site started to 404 due to the heavy traffic. If you have closer ties to the pirating community, you could find a program to get the codes for you. … This method took a little more work out of the user, but it was still simple enough for a 12 year old to figure out. … Microsoft found out about this exploit and put a stop to it immediately, but internet pirates still had enough time to steal $1.2 million worth of Microsoft Points.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
itwbennett writes “It’s one of those questions that really should never come up, but as blogger Peter Smith points out, Stephen Toulouse, the head of Xbox Live enforcement, is used to fielding all sorts of strange questions. Recently, one of those questions was apparently ‘Can I use a Swastika as my logo in Call of Duty: Black Ops?’ When Toulouse responded with the obvious answer (’No, of course you can’t, we’ll ban you.’) he was met with some pushback by people he refers to as ‘contrarians’ and ‘internet pundits’ who decided to educate him on the long and storied history of the swastika as a symbol of good fortune and how just because the Nazis used it, it doesn’t make the symbol itself a bad thing. Toulouse covers the topic on his blog in a post titled Context and it’s an interesting read if for no other reason than to get a peek inside the day-to-day issues the Xbox Live Enforcement team deals with.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
