Xbox 360 News

IGN has an interesting article about Microsoft's upcoming spring cleaning of Xbox Live. An exact date has not yet been specified but it is rumoured to be next week sometime. Makes you wonder if there will be anything that address's the recent DVD-ROM firmware hacks?

Good news for Hitachi DVD-ROM Xbox360 owners - commodore4eva, the one responsible for the Xtreme Firmware hack [which works on Samsung drives only], has made it apparent in the xboxhacker forums he will soon be releasing a similar hack for Hitachi drives. Sit tight and stay tuned!

This is cool - it comes from LittleJonny of Team Cavern Imports.

Finally - it's here!

It seems that Halo 3 will be released some time in 2007, and there's a trailer out in the Xbox MarketPlace.

LOS ANGELES--Microsoft officially unveiled Halo 3 during its E3 press conference today, and the company released a trailer for its highly-anticipated sequel on the Internet and its Xbox Live service. Halo 3 will be the first Halo game designed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, and the importance to the company was highlighted by the fact that Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect, was on hand to help announce the game.

Update: the F-360 TEAM has released KDX v1.1 - just a minor update:

• Complete language support
• Fixed bug with variable keys of Samsung firmwares

Download KDX v1.1

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Update: scener, along with the help of juanker and Apolo [the F-360 team], have updated Key Drive Xtractor (KDX) to v1.0! New in v1.0:

• Compatibility with Toshiba 46DH and 47DH and Samsung MN25 firmw

TeamXecuter has made it apparent their Xbox360 DVD to PC adaptor will be shipped soon - no price is set yet; however, it's supposedly affordable for the end-user. There will also be bundle kits available - both the HDD adaptor and the DVD adaptor. At the same time you can expect to be using the DVD drive firmware reader/writer allowing you to trick the 360 into booting backed up games. Great news!

Well this doesn't come as a surprise to me:

In a joint announcement, Microsoft and the manufacturer of the Xbox 360's CPU, Chartered Semiconductor, have announced that the console's processor will receive an upgrade in 2007. The upgrade will move the chip's design to a 65nm manufacturing process (the existing CPU is based on 90nm technology) which will provide lower power consumption and a smaller heat output.

Datel has come up with a better memory solution than the memory unit (aka memory card), and would be the 4 Gig hard drive that plugs into the usb port. It's only 2cm, by 5, by 5.7, and is under four onces. So not very big, and not very heavy, but the price is $149

Datel was in the news earlier with their hard drive for the Sony PSP. Now they offer a hard drive for the popular Xbox 360. The 4Gb hard drive acts like a Flash drive for the Xbox 360, it connects via USB 2.0 to the 360.

Update: Team Xecuter has made it apparent a public release will be available soon!

The scene can expect a hack for all drives very soon (It's currently only Hitachi) - you can be assured that it will be released although I don't think modchips will be any kind of business as its a pure piracy mod - no homebrew at all.

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The Xbox 360 has been hacked by Comments: 41

I just received note that last week Microsoft announced they will be opening up Xbox Live to everyone for the weekend - a full 72 hours, for free!

The Verizon-sponsored Free Xbox Live Gold Weekend will feature 72 hours of nonstop events, constituting the largest programming effort of online Xbox® multiplayer games ever.

I have a love hate relationship with EA's Fight Night Round 3. It is a great game and in my opinion the best game out for the Xbox 360 right now. My problems lie with it's multiplayer functionality. To make a long story short it took EA's tech support several months to finally come to the conclusion that I could not get any EA titles to work online because they don't keep their databases of valid customers fully in synch with Microsoft's Xbox Live databases.

It seems like datel is planning on releasing a memory card to transfer data from the 360, to the pc.

Datel is planning to release a device and accompanying software that will allow you to transfer games, downloads and any other data very easily to your PC.
The retail price is expected to be around $14.99, and should be welcomed because unlike previously, users will no longer be required to modify their memory cards to effect the transfer.

Gael360 has released an update to wxHdd - a tool to read/navigate the Xbox360 hdd filesystem. New in v1.2 * Experimental support for memory cards (v1.0.1) * Fixed some bugs (v1.0.1) * Handling fragmentation of disc (v1.2) * Opening of several partitions (v1.2) * Extracting directories (v1.2) * Instant/Direct opening of files (v1.2) * Note: wxHdd does not have a feature to 'add files' (write on HD/Image) yet. Also, aside from wxHdd - Gael360 has also released a new tool, wxPirs.

360GameSaves.com has released beta 3 of Xplorer360 - now with original Xbox support! Besides the addition of Xbox support; this release also fixes two bugs related to the backup/restore and the previous physical device injection problems. So, grab Xplorer360 Beta 3 here!

360gamesaves.com has released Xplorer360 Beta 2! You can now connect your Xbox360 HDD to your PC via an S-ATA controller, and Xplorer360 will provide you with the following functionality:

• FULL Read/Write to 360 HDDs.
• FULL Read/Write to 360 Memory Units.
• Physical and Logical drive access.
• Support for opening of dumps of both devices.
• Backup/Restore dump options.

What's all this mean? Well a lot!

Gael360 has also released an update to wxTheme - a tool used to extract the contents of the Xbox360 theme files.

The biggest difference is an improved handling of the PIRS format to allow extracting theme files located on the Xbox 360 HD. You'll find the themes you downloaded from LIVE in this directory on your Xbox360 HD (atleast that's where they were on my console): \Content\0000000000000000\FFFFE07D1\00030000 You can also use this software to open PIRS files other than themes files, but with some bugs

Gael360 has released a new Windows tool whichs allows you to easily read/navigate the file-system on the Xbox360 hard drive.

Paulus, from Xbox-scene.com, has accomplished an extremely cool mod!

I got my watercooled 360 finished this week. I made a waterblock to cover both the CPU and GPU and the pump is fitted internally. The reason I put it on the left side is the right side has a metal plate across it and I didnt want to start cutting it.

source: xboxhacker Looks like Thespecialist was able to successfully boot a backed up DVD on an original Xbox without any modchip or softmod - just using custom hacked firmware for the 8050L dvd-rom drive. The great news is the GDR3120 drive (in the Xbox360) runs a similar firmware version. This may open up a few possibilities!