Xbox 360 game piracy is spreading very fast in China with vendors selling Xbox 360 titles such as Hitman: Blood Money for around 30 Chinese Yuan ($3.50). This comes after an incident in March 2006, where hackers had managed to flash changes to the firmware on the Xbox 360’s DVD-ROM drive which permitted non-validated games to be played on the console. A public version of the exploit has also been released by other parties.
Apprehensive about the launch of the Xbox 360 in China due to piracy concerns, earlier this year, Alan Bowman, general manager of entertainment and devices for Asia Pacific and Greater China, had said, “We’re working with the government pretty actively in trying to understand what it is we need to do. We’re taking a very careful approach in China. It’s a very controlled environment. We’re going to make sure that we make the right moves, develop the right content, and have the right partnerships in place. It’s not something you want to rush in and do. About two years ago Sony tried to do something there and stumbled and it’ll take them a long time to repatriate that with the government. I don’t intend to let that happen to us.”
Stores and individuals in Shanghai are offering to flash the Xbox 360’s disc drive BIOS for a fee. A large selection of Xbox 360 games is available at game vendors throughout China, including Ninety-Nine Nights, Fight Night Round 3, and Project Gotham Racing 3. The pirated versions of PlayStation 2 and Xbox discs are common on the market stands all over Shanghai. Sony and Nintendo Co. too have been cautious of launching products in China, mainly because of worries of piracy.
But in the future connecting to Xbox Live will at some point download system updates. This will prevent continued playing of pirated gaming titles. But then there could be a way out of it also.