It takes a bit of technical know-how to modify your Xbox 360 for unintended purposes, so it's not surprising that modders have already devised ways to stop Microsoft's anti-piracy measures.
Last week, Microsoft said it was cracking down on a small percentage of users with modified, or "modded" consoles by banning them from Xbox Live. The move was intended to stop software piracy, and some reports said that up to 1 million consoles were taken offline as a result. The ability to install games to the console's hard drive was also disabled, along with Windows Media Player extender.
It looks like there are fixes available for all of those problems, though they aren't easily performed by people with limited technical skills. The solution for being banned from Xbox Live is a bit complicated, requiring a lot of free software tools, plus a second, unmodded Xbox 360 that hasn't been banned from Xbox Live.
The solution for bricked hard drives only requires some soldering in order to ground one pin on the hard drive's NAND Write Protect chip. A switch can also be installed to allow ungrounding, which lets users install kernel or firmware updates. It's not clear to me whether a console whose hard drive was already bricked can be salvaged through this method.
Of course, both of these solutions violate Microsoft's Terms of Use and could be illegal, and there's no guarantee either will work.
While Microsoft may have trouble dealing with the most resilient modders, users who got their consoles modded by a professional or a friend might not be so willing to hack their Xbox 360s any further. I think Microsoft will be satisfied with its work.
In forums and blog posts, I've seen talk of backlash from Xbox 360 owners whose consoles were banned. They'll switch to the Playstation 3, they say, pointing out how Microsoft is losing customers. But with console makers earning most of their money on game sales, will Sony want business from people who don't buy any games?
