I know, I’m really splashing out this month lol, a song and a game!

I’ve owned an xbox 360 for about 2 years, I have played ~50 games, and I’ve never bought a single one. Actually I’ve bought XBLA titles, but never a full game.

Gears of War 2 is just that good that it made me actually order the disc.

I got banned last year for playing ‘backup’ games on my modified 360, so I sold it and bought a new one. That cost me about #30 on top of what I got for the old one. Meaning I paid less than the price of a game, and I gained an extra controller.

Why did I pirate? I think games are ridiculously over priced. I’m a poor student! I can’t afford to pay #50 per game. Buy a handful of games and you’ve paid for your console twice over. Tbh if I couldn’t pirate my console games, I wouldn’t own one. You don’t see me playing on a PS3 – the console is over 300pounds, and then you have to pay 50pound per game… that’s a ripoff to me.

PC games are far more fair-priced. I’ve always bought my PC games (and I’m a PC gamer long before I’m a console gamer), and I’ve paid for many MMORPGs, which feature monthly charges. So it’s not that I’m tight. I just don’t like being ripped off.

Gears of War (original) is what made me purchase an xbox 360. I played it at my friend James’ house and I thought it was revolutionary! Gears of War 2 is just as good, if not better. So I feel it deserves my 40quid.
That and I want the bonus maps. The old Gears 1 maps have been re-made for Gears 2 and you can only download them with a code that comes with the Gears 2 box.

Maybe techniques like this would work for other titles in the future, to stop piracy. Big companies like EA need to stop screwing their customers with horrible, horrible, DRM solutions, and just offer bonuses to people who buy their game.
Bonuses/Rewards > Punishments. They are all your (potential) customers, instead of trying to piss them off, try to win them over. Loyaly alone will get people to buy your games…

That and if you just charge a fair price, people will buy your product.
If I see something on Xbox Live I like, I just buy it, I don’t pirate it. Because I like to show my support to the company being fair. I’m about to buy Portal: Still Alive, which is an expansion pack to Valve’s Portal – which I thought was a brilliant game.

That’s how it works. Treat your customers well, and they in return will treat you well.

Although flashing the firmware is not directly a void of your waranty, opening the xbox360 case is.
Therefore if you’re going to flash your xbox360, you will not be able to send it back.

Please note this guide is for my own personal use, and since I have forgotten how I got things working in the past, and I often lose my hand-written scribble, I’m writing this as a point of reference.
I take no responsibility if you follow these directions and cause any damage to your machine. Aight.

This guide assumes you have opened the case of your xbox360 (plenty of guides for that), and that you have downloaded the firmware files from xbins, and placed them on a bootable USB/ZIP disk (plenty of guides for that too).

There are 3 different sections, for the 3 different hackable dvd drives.

In this guide I refer to the xbox360 by its rightful name, xbox2.

Hax0ring teh xbox2

[Toshiba-Samsung]

1. Unplug SATA cables from Hard Drives, plug one into 360 DVD Drive.
2. Disable HDDs in BIOS.

3. Turn on PC and boot from USB/ZIP disk.
4. Turn on xbox2 (If your PC halts, wait until PC has passed SATA-detection before turning on xbox2).

5. Enter one of the below commands;

• {Reading Original Firmware} mtkflash r /m orig.bin
• {Writing Hacked Firmware} mtkflash w /m hacked.bin

6. Turn off xbox2.
7. Select ‘Xtreme’.
8. Wait exactly 10 seconds.
9. Turn on xbox2 [Reading or Writing of firmware will now commence. If not, return to Step 3].
10. Turn off PC.

11. Enter the command below;

• x360sam orig.bin [insert firmware name here] hacked.bin
• e.g. x360sam orig.bin ix-13D.bin hacked.bin

12. If original has been read, goto Step 3 for hacking, otherwise, your console is now haxxed!

[Hitachi]

1. Plug drive into a Windows XP PC via USB cable.
2. Open a command prompt to Hitachi firmware location.
3. Type in the following command, where X is the Hitachi drive letter (1337 can be anything).

• FLASH24S X 1337

[BenQ]

(Copy fresh ix14-5x.bin from firmware directory, because FIRMTOOL overwrites it each time)

1. Turn on xbox2 & PC, and boot from USB/ZIP disk.
2. Type the following commands;

• DOSFLASH r E000 1 a0 1 4 orig.bin 0
• FIRMTOOL orig.bin ix14-5.bin

Restart xbox & PC.

• DOSFLASH e E000 1 a0 1 4 C7 0

Turn on PC first, and boot from USB/ZIP disk, then turn on xbox2.

• DOSFLASH w E000 1 a0 1 4 ix14-5x.bin 0

(Now you may want to del ix14-5x.bin to avoid future confusion).

*Note: E000 is the address of my SATA port.

[Troubleshooting]

If device fails to write for whatever reason, and gets stuck in recovery mode, use DOSFLASH instead of mtkflash.