The company does not ban the user’s account but rather the modified system themselves and will not be able to access the Live service using their modified console. This will benefit users who did not modify their console and continues to buy original games rather than the pirated copy. Microsoft is very strict when it comes to the topic of piracy. If a gamer modifies his or her console, this will enable him to purchase pirated copies of games. Modified consoles connecting to the Live service will receive and ominous sounding error – “Status Code: Z: 8015-190D”. Even people using the new firmwares with disc-jitter are detected and eventually banned.

Microsoft’s official statement goes like this:

As part of our commitment to our members, we will not allow people that have been detected by our system to connect using their modified console. The company will continue to enforce this rule to ensure the integrity of the service and protect our partners and users.

This act is to prevent hacking, cheating and most important piracy. Even though the affected parties are the ones using modified systems. After the big announcement of Microsoft, hundred of feedbacks were flooding the Xbox Live Blog. Some praised this move but others have complaints like they are banned from connecting to Live even if they are using a non-modified console. This is a problem that Microsoft has to see and plan new solutions to fix this problem. Will this be a solution to minimize the continuing problem on piracy.

It was unveiled on Music Television (MTV) segment on May 12, 2005.During the planning and development of Xbox 360, it was given many names such as Xenon, Xbox 2 and NextBox. IBM was in-charged to produce the CPU (Central Processing Unit), ATI to work on the GPU (Graphic Processing Unit). The CPU made by IBM is a custom triple-core processor. The first Xbox uses a GPU produced by NVIDIA while Xbox 360 used the chip designed by ATI. While Dolby Digital Sound added a feature that requires games to be at least 5.1-channel Dolby Digital surround sound. The console has a MPEG-2 decoder for video playback, WMV used for streaming video and supports H.263 & H.264 MPEG4 videos. The hardware of the Xbox 360 supports a wide array of SDTV and HDTV resolutions. The early production of Xbox 360 were equipped with a 12X DVD drive but Microsoft came up with a final decision not to include an internal HD DVD player. An external drive can be connected to the console via the USB port. The Xbox 360 features a new array of components and accessories. A maximum of four controllers which includes wired and wireless gamepads can be connected to the main unit.

With the emerging wireless connectivity, a wireless network adapter is available in the market intended for the Xbox 360. With this features, it shows that Microsoft can also produce a quality gaming console that can compete side by side with Sony Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii. This is a hardware that can act as a computer and gaming system.

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