Xbox 360 Hacks - News, Hacks, Cracks, Mods.

- Spy on your pals. You’ll be able to look at your friends’ Friends lists and see who they’re friends with. That’s Kind of creepy, and more than a little unnecessary. Thankfully, you can opt out in advance or after launch. To make your selection now (choose between letting everyone check out your Friends list, just your friends, or blocking it entirely), go to www.xbox.com/fof/.

- Downloadable original-Xbox games will be available for purchase in Marketplace for $15. Click here for the full story. There are no Achievements and a steep price kind of made me not care at all.. $15.00 compared to $2.99 or $9.99 in the major stores? Yeah, that’s steep alright. Have you seen the Oblivion downloads lately? Shivering Isles DOUBLED since I last downloaded it.

- A new Family Timer will let parents place limits on their kids’ accounts, regulating the amount of time they can play on a daily or weekly basis. I like this one, very much, no more sneaking around, and sign-in sheets for the kiddies. So, there’s no complaints about anything that helps Mom & Dad do a better job of parenting, right?

None of this to follow, is confirmed yet, but they appeared to have trickled out of Microsoft Japan, so lets give them a good degree of probability, but a close to 0% chance of fact-hood until Microsoft’s press release, or other data they send out. So, here is what that is:- Live Arcade demos might be deleted from your Played Games, and Gamercard lists. Whoo-Hooo?

- An expanded space might happen on your Gamercard that gives you 500 to 1,000 characters to brag (lie) about yourself. It could be called a Personal Profile.

- The Games blade could be tweaked so that the old entry of Xbox Live Arcade is replaced by Game Library (underneath Achievements and Played Games). When you click on Game Library, you can use the familiar horizontal sorting (like the ones in Marketplace) to click between Arcade, Demos, Recent Downloads, All Games, and so on.

- Marketplace itself could be shuffled to offer a simpler opening page with selections like Game Store, Video Store, What’s New, and Recommended Content.

What people still want? DivX playback, maybe XviD as well, nothing on that. Maybe a bigger Friends lists, a longer download queue, and a better; more TiVo-like sort in Marketplace? It would be nice enter a letter, and start browsing there rather than page through everything to get there.

Anything else? No rumors or information on security, or other updates… Just keep in mind that anything this big may implement stricter security regarding hacked firmwares, backups, and anything else you may do. We just had a November 21st ban-fest, so remember, you play backups at your own risk, ALL the time.

iPrep 101 is a .NET application and collection of MSDOS scripts/applications for use in flashing a Samsung TS-H943A or BenQ DVD drives.

To Restore: (Requires back-up of firmware)
1. Boot from your prepared drive or your NTFS cd.
2. Type r[Ben/Sam] 7-digit serial 5-digit serial.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Download here (1.15 MB)
Official Website: http://www.x-projects.org

Videos have started making their way across the interwebs on how to hack your Rock Band drums to work with your PC. The reason this gets us so excited is the potential for a freeware version of “Drumer Hero”.  Something that would let us jam to our favorite tracks on the PC without having to pay $3 for each new song. The steps on how to hack your 360 controller are slightly harder than it’s PS3 counterpart. Read on for the steps…

1. Download and extract this file. Double click install. This will copy the required system files automatically.
2. Connect your drum kit
3. When the install driver dialog box comes up click “No” to searching for a driver.
4. Click “Install from list or specific location”
5. Click “Include this location in the search” and in the textbox type the name of the file above
6. When Windows asks for the location of the two driver files, point it to the directory you cpied them to
7. If all that went well your drum kit is now recognized as a standard Xbox controller. Open the Gamepad properties and test it out.

via dxprog.com

We’ve seen the connection made before with freeware titles such as Frets on Fire for the Guitar Hero controller, and StepMania for the DDR dance pad. So get on it game programmers! We need something else to beat while on our computers.

A new PCB ADD ON that allow an easy procedure of downgrade will be released in the next 10 days, more info this week. Here the picture of the sample pcb:

Using the Infectus chip and this addon board, you’ll be able to downgrade (using the ‘Timing Attack’) any current Xbox360 kernel (to an exploitable one (4532, or 4548) for example – so you can get CPU key and run linux, edit keyvault, unban console and later maybe run homebrew).  From infectus.biz:

We don’t have a lot of information yet, but it looks like Microsoft started a new wave of bans against modified DVD firmwares or DVD+/-R DL discs. You can’t Bitset DVD-R discs to a DVD-ROM booktype!

Several users on the Xbox Scene forums and on IRC report their Xbox 360 has been banned from LIVE today. We get reports of both Toshiba-Samsung and Hitachi-LG drives banned with all types of different firmwares (with both Xtreme and iXtreme).

No reports of banned BenQ drives yet (but few of these drives have been flashed yet).
We don’t know yet if Microsoft is detecting the modified firmware or the discs (maybe only with a specific game(s)?).

If you have the ‘Z Code’ 8015-190D it means you are banned.

If your console is banned or if you have been playing on LIVE today with modified FW without getting banned, report you findings in this thread.

So until we have more info we HIGHLY suggest you don’t log in to Xbox LIVE and don’t play any games from DVD+/-R DL (even offline, just incase MS flags something) if you have a flashed DVD drive.

Microsoft has said you can get 10 free Live Arcade titles if you convince a friend to buy an Xbox 360. So, I have to convince them to buy one? That won’t be too hard, with the Arcade version at a nice price…

If you have a buddy who fits the bill, then pop over to the official site and fill out a festive form together. Just provide the serial number on both of your consoles, and a sales receipt to show that your friend splashed out between 1st October and 14th December and you win; 10 XBLA games, that is…

Both of you will be given; Every Extend Extra Extreme, Sonic The Hedgehog, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Bomberman Live, Marble Blast Ultra, Spyglass Boardgames, 3D Mini Golf Adventures, Small Arms, Assault Heroes and Zuma Deluxe.

So, we can choose our sucker, I mean friend, but not the 10 games? Typical…

Cut to the chase, here is the FORM in PDF format.

Attention Spartans!

The internationally award-winning “Halo 3” multiplayer experience is about to get even better. After launching to incredible acclaim and fanaticism, “Halo 3” players will be able to enjoy three all new multiplayer maps on Dec. 11 as part of the Heroic Map Pack, the first in a series of downloadable content from Bungie Studios to come via Xbox LIVE.

Available for 800 Microsoft Points, exclusively on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, each map presents a totally different play style. Standoff’s symmetrical valley, with its entrenched bases and fields of boulders is ideal for mid-sized objective and Slayer game types, while Rat’s Nest’s vast, labyrinthine passages bring something new to the “Halo” multiplayer experience: an indoor vehicle paradise, strongly influenced by the Campaign mode, ideal for big team battles. Finally, Foundry is the ultimate Forge map – players can edit every single object in this voluminous industrial warehouse, place stairways, walls, bridges and tunnels to create an entirely new play space and build almost any kind of map they can think of.

All three maps will become available for free download via Xbox LIVE Marketplace in Spring 2008, just prior to the next wave of all new “Halo 3” multiplayer maps.

Everyone should wait to get them free, send a message that; We already paid 60.00 for the game, more for the collectors edition, MORE for the legendary edition, more for the still faulty H3 Edition XB360, and as a result; made Bungie an all time record setting week (they beat Spiderman III, damn them!).  We get so little for free, yet pay for just about everything.

The XNA team is pleased to announce the Beta release of XNA Game Studio 2.0! This Beta release is your chance to try out the new features available in XNA Game Studio 2.0, including support for Visual Studio 2005, multiplayer support over System Link and LIVE, and many more features and enhancements, many suggested by you, the community members.

If you’re an existing XNA Game Studio Express user, you won’t have to worry about uninstalling anything – XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) lives comfortably side-by-side with XNA Game Studio Express. Just follow the link below to find out what’s new in XNA Game Studio 2.0 and download the Beta, as well as updated sample content you can use with the Beta right away. There’s even a multiplayer-enabled starter kit you can use to familiarize yourself with multiplayer programming in the XNA Framework.

XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) supports multiplayer gaming over Games for Windows – LIVE. If you are planning on making multiplayer games on Windows that make use of any Games for Windows – LIVE features, you will need an Xbox LIVE Gamertag that has an active XNA Creators Club membership, and a special token.

To receive your token, send a message to xnacgp@microsoft.com with the subject “Beta Key Request”. Note that you must send this message from the same e-mail address that is associated with an Xbox LIVE Gamertag that has an active XNA Creators Club membership. (Note it may take up to a few days to receive your code in email)

If you’re not an XNA Creators Club member, you can use the System Link functionality or program against the multiplayer API’s without a code.

Please keep in mind that the timeframe between this release and our final release will be very short, in fact we’ve already had a chance to fix some of the larger issues that you may run into during the beta. That said, if you do run into issues I would encourage you to file them through our Microsoft Connect site HERE.

Get it Here: [xna.com]

Matt Walker will no longer be faced with Xbox 360 heating issues –

Very cool!

Redline99 released a new version of Xbox Backup Creator (info), a tool that will allow you to easily dump, create/patch and burn Xbox and Xbox 360 images with full support for SS, DMI and PFI.

What’s new/fixed:
* Added – Added support for Kreon’s SH-D163B firmware
* Added – Added support for Kreon’s SH-D162D firmware
* Added – Verify Disc button on the Drive Tools(info) Tab
* Added – Added option to do a Verify Disc after a Burn (Note: Used ImgBurns build in Verify when selected)

Download: here
Full Readme: xbins.org