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How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

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Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#131

Post by girvo »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #108
anonymousiam wrote: post #105

This is the same sort of bullshit that HP has done with their computer hard drives, but with an even more elaborate lock-in by Microsoft in this case. The HP computers came with an OEM Windows CD so you could re-install the OS after replacing a bad hard drive, but if you chose to replace the hard drive with anything other than a "genuine" HP replacement part, the Windows installation would fail. Note that the HP repl…

> Dell has its own problems these days. I am honestly very annoyed that my 2019 XPS 15 will refuse to negotiate anything higher than 65W over USB-C PD on a non-Dell charger. Their dock does 130W, yet every third party dock, brick, or monitor I use it refuses to exceed 65W.

Gross. That sounds like it's non-standard, right? One of the many reasons I'll never own a Dell, despite some of their hardware being quite nice in other respects.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#132

Post by Gigachad »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #108
anonymousiam wrote: post #105

This is the same sort of bullshit that HP has done with their computer hard drives, but with an even more elaborate lock-in by Microsoft in this case. The HP computers came with an OEM Windows CD so you could re-install the OS after replacing a bad hard drive, but if you chose to replace the hard drive with anything other than a "genuine" HP replacement part, the Windows installation would fail. Note that the HP repl…

> Dell has its own problems these days. I am honestly very annoyed that my 2019 XPS 15 will refuse to negotiate anything higher than 65W over USB-C PD on a non-Dell charger. Their dock does 130W, yet every third party dock, brick, or monitor I use it refuses to exceed 65W.

The whole windows market has been an absolute dumpster fire lately. The "modern standby" issue is infuriating. In a year or two I think the Macbook might honestly be the best linux laptop you can buy. I've got Asahi set up on my M1 and it's borderline usable now. Just waiting on thunderbolt and power management to be done and I could work with this.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#133

Post by Waterluvian »

capableweb wrote: post #129
jchw wrote: post #56

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 grea…

I love the newest entrant to the console wars, who decided to just run their game store on a Linux computer, optimize the UX a bit and make it all work great with its chosen hardware. Currently maybe a bit underpowered, but shows great promise and I believe the Steam Deck has a bright future in front of it.

The Steam Deck has sold fewer than 1% the number of Switches sold, which tells me there is far more to selling a console than the technology. Well, that’s an obvious statement, but I think many of us tech people commonly under-appreciate all the “non-engineering” components to making a product successful.

I think “optimize the UX a bit” is what they did, and it falls very woefully short of what they need. Especially when it arguably has a far bigger and better library of titles.

I hope Valve doesn’t throw in the towel after the first round. The Steam Deck idea can be a killer one. It just needs a lot more UX polish and marketing.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#134

Post by Gigachad »

0x457 wrote: post #63
jbverschoor wrote: post #19

Of all components, a disk is the only thing that “regularly” fail, that become too small, and have no other security impact, no profit margin (I think) It’s idiotic MS took this route. And what’s the downside/risk for MS? Nothing.. if the Xbox doesn’t work anymore, just don’t give any support on that disk

Margins are low on retail drives. Drives MS was selling had _plenty_ of margin. Which is why MS went that way. Also, this saves you from "I bought shitty drive from NoName on alibaba and it doesn't work" support requests. Still stupid though. Glad Sony out of all companies opened up PS3 they way they did.

> Also, this saves you from "I bought shitty drive from NoName on alibaba and it doesn't work" support requests.

Don't be silly. The user would never disclose that part. It would be "My xbox doesn't work, send me a replacement"

Although the reasonable way to handle this would be for the xbox to detect non genuine drives and report it but not block them. So support would quickly see the cause of the issue.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#135

Post by fortran77 »

morcheeba wrote: post #24
nywles wrote: post #15

May the logo have been included so that the security sector could not be distributed under copyright law?

That was a tactic Nintendo used with the gameboy. The courts eventually decided that the logo, when used as an access token like that, no longer qualified for the creative component required for copyright protection.

But logos never get copyright protection. They get trademark protection.

https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/trademark-patent-cop...

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#136

Post by Gigachad »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #46
robotnikman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how hackable they made the Steam Deck, you can easily find replacement parts as well. I even remember someone got an external graphics card working on one by using the NVME slot and an adapter to connect it. Of course, that kinda defeats the whole purpose of the Steam Deck lol

Repairability and general hackability are core design goals of the Steam Deck compared to other devices. On the software side, they don't hide the desktop Linux core.

Valve is one of the few companies I don't feel is egregiously cashing in on their market monopoly store fees. The amount of value they give back is astounding. I remember buying a logitech racing wheel and finding it didn't work on linux, when I looked it up I saw a valve employee on the linux mailing list with a patch ready to merge to fix it.

And then there is the incredible work done on Proton. I couldn't have imagined the future of gaming on linux was that Wine would be improved so much you couldn't tell it was being used.. At the time everyone figured you just had to complain in the game forums for a linux version and eventually it would work.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#137

Post by Gigachad »

amalcon wrote: post #110
izacus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam Deck is pretty much the spiritual opposite of everything the console makers and the DRM industry stands for. I'm just waiting for big DRM publishers to start blocking it with excuse of poor DRM security and lockout.

It's sold by arguably the largest DRM provider. Valve just seems think of DRM as a way to keep honest people honest, rather than as something that aspires to be unassailable.

It's a bit different. The Steam Deck is not locked down like consoles are. You can run anything you want on them. They then additionally allow game devs to use steam as DRM for individual games. But you are still free to run whatever software you want.

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#138

Post by LelouBil »

Waterluvian wrote: post #133
capableweb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the newest entrant to the console wars, who decided to just run their game store on a Linux computer, optimize the UX a bit and make it all work great with its chosen hardware. Currently maybe a bit underpowered, but shows great promise and I believe the Steam Deck has a bright future in front of it.

The Steam Deck has sold fewer than 1% the number of Switches sold, which tells me there is far more to selling a console than the technology. Well, that’s an obvious statement, but I think many of us tech people commonly under-appreciate all the “non-engineering” components to making a product successful. I think “optimize the UX a bit” is what they did, and it falls very woefully short of what they need. Especially…

I think they sold enough to justify its existence, even if it's not much comparing to console manufacturers

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#139

Post by jiggawatts »

jchw wrote: post #56

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 grea…

To this day, there is significantly better security in your XBox account to protect your in-game collectables than can be achieved by huge enterprises trying to protect their corporate secrets on Microsoft 365.

E.g.: the corporate default settings for MFA show zero additional information. Literally just an “accept” button. The XBox equivalent shows location, etc…

Re: How the Xbox 360 knows if your hard drive is genuine

#140

Post by caslon »

Waterluvian wrote: post #133
capableweb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the newest entrant to the console wars, who decided to just run their game store on a Linux computer, optimize the UX a bit and make it all work great with its chosen hardware. Currently maybe a bit underpowered, but shows great promise and I believe the Steam Deck has a bright future in front of it.

The Steam Deck has sold fewer than 1% the number of Switches sold, which tells me there is far more to selling a console than the technology. Well, that’s an obvious statement, but I think many of us tech people commonly under-appreciate all the “non-engineering” components to making a product successful. I think “optimize the UX a bit” is what they did, and it falls very woefully short of what they need. Especially…

The Switch is the fifth best selling console of all time. That's not at all a fair comparison, especially given the difference in price point and how long the Switch has been on the market.

On the other hand, it's plausible that the Steam Deck could hit within 50% of Vita, the Wii U or Gamecube, which is amazing for Valve's second push into the console market, and immensely profitable, given Valve owns pretty much the only avenue with which people will be buying games for it and gets a 30% cut, on top of the Deck being significantly more expensive than any comparable console, now or historically.

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