How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

There was the USB official setup later, but you could also find a hard drive of the same model and flash firmware from a 360 drive onto it. So yes, but not just any drive.

Right, but it doesn't cost Microsoft anything to add their logo as an additional check. If laws or court precedent change, it's already there. (For example, the DMCA came long after the Sega decision)

Microsoft really seemed to be ahead of the curve with console security. They really thought this through back in 2005 or so, to the point where clearly, they knew people would hack the drives to rewrite the serial number. It's probably for the best that they never actually did anything about the knowledge that gave them, but they clearly stayed a step ahead of the game. As much as I hate it, their actions show a great deal of respect towards the ingenuity of console hackers, because if they didn't, they would've never bothered to do such an effort thwarting them. Compared to the Nintendo Wii, which had a decent security model that was ultimately ill-fated due to several fatal flaws in both hardware and firmware, and the PlayStation, where Sony seems to have a continual problem developing security measures that hackers and modders can just completely ignore, Microsoft really pulled it off. I still wish game consoles would allow you to just run your own code. Xbox has dev mode, which I haven't ever used since I generally do not buy game consoles, but it does seem like the absolute best option that's been available to consumers lately. Before then, it was OtherOS (ill-fated,) PS2 Linux (cool but kinda limited,) and Net Yaroze? Which seemed awesome to me, but unfortunately was a relatively uncommon good. Beyond that, official escapes from the walled garden are truly scarce. A sad reality that will get worse when measures like remote attestation finally make their way to general purpose computers. Remember: you can never have nice things. Ever.

Thanks for FATXplorer BTW, it is very useful.

Not disagreeing but remember

> Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, loses at least $153 (U.S.) on each Xbox 360 video game console it sells, based on just the cost of components and assembly, a research firm says. Parts such as processors and manufacturing cost $552.27 for each machine that retails at $399, El Segundo, Calif.

With this context it doesn’t surprise me they try to recoup something on each optional hardware upgrade.

When was that? Because at the start of the console your chip might be a cutting edge and incur massive costs, but cost a tenth to produce once it goes from cutting-edge to practiced.