The Hammer of Gates - Your Soul is Mine!

According to reports on xbox-scene and from Major Nelson himself, Xbox live console bans are in full force.  This latest ban hammer coincided with the Remembrance Day holiday and comes 8 days before the expected launch of Microsoft's new dashboard.  It was only a matter of time, having been ban-free for the last 11 months, pirates have certainly enjoyed some glorious play over XBL.

The timing of this latest ban, a full week prior the release of the new dashboard, is certain unexpected, considering that the new dashboard has already been released on the torrent sites.  As of this writing, the xbox-scene forums are down and inaccessible.  I'm unsure if this is due to traffic/backlash/whining from the Xbox360 users.  No official word has been released if there are associated gamertag bans as well of if it's console specific as in the ban from November 2007.

I own two distinct consoles personally, one for online and one for offline so I'm not particularly concerned unless they are banning gamertags as well.  It's also interesting to see if console sales increase every time a console ban happens.  I can imagine lots of people running out now to grab a new console so they can play the latest XBL games only to find out that they don't have enough cash to buy the games they need as well or that these new consoles cannot be modified with the traditional means.

As I've said many times now, the golden age of modding is coming to a close quickly.  Console makers are learning fast.  They have the benefit of hindsight, learning from the mistakes of their PC counterparts and anticipating the pirate's ingenuity and skills.  If the PS3 can remain uncrackable, it's not out of the question that these new machines can also be updated to include iron clad security devices or enough to be annoyingly difficult to modify so you will give up.