PS3/XBox 360 Query

No. You'd be cool if you have no mods.

I think it's pretty absurd that the publishers have managed to get this notion out there that rented/used games = piracy. Rented games are 100% legit.

Why be legit? Get a PS3 and a Playstation jailbreak and backup all those rented games or download the ISOs. 😛

Unless your game rental place stocks up on counterfeit or pirated games, you're good.

My guess is there's two things that get pirates caught:

• Playing games before the release date
• Some kind of digital fingerprinting in the disc image

Round 2 is also plausible. There's probably some data in each disc (particularly pre-release discs) that uniquely identifies each one. Seeing the same disc id pop up on 2 or 3 consoles over a period of a few months is a reasonable pattern considering used sales and rentals. Seeing the same id pop up on 300 different consoles, 200 of them simultaneously, is probably a bit less likely to be a coincidence. Especially if the company downloads the ISOs to check which discs are pirated.

I do agree with Cloral though; it's not ridiculous that you had this question. It's ridiculous that the console gaming environment has created an environment where you felt the need to ask it.

Thanks for the responses. I suspected that I'd be fine, but I just wanted to be sure before I really started looking into it.

Here's another question, this time a bit more interesting. If I got a chipped 360, but only used it for playing import games, would I get in trouble for playing games online/downloading DLC/grabbing achievements for games from my region that I rent/buy preowned?

Also, ctrl-alt-del - the latest firmware update breaks the Jailbreak. So nya! 😛

If you connect to XBL with a detectable mod that's a chip, custom firmware, or otherwise, your console will be banned from XBL. Your XBL account will be fine, but your console will be banned. Currently, the 360 mod community assumes that mods are detected whether you're connected to XBL or not, and that your system flags itself, and then sends the flag whenever you do connect.

Also, many games are just region free, so check that out.

If you really want to play import/modded games and play online, you'd want to have two consoles.

Ok, thanks for the responses! Clears up a fair bit for me.

And finally, which do you think I should go for first? The PS3 or the XBox360?

(I've pretty much decided already, but I'm interested to hear what you guys think)

Depends on what you want from the console. If you plan on playing online a lot, the 360 is probably your best bet. Even though the Live service costs money, the overall setup is far superior to PSN. The 360 is probably also bedder for modding, as the ps3 mod scene is very, very new.
Otherwise, I'd go with the PS3. The free online service makes playing games online sporadically more justifiable. Plus you get a blu-ray player, more reliable hardware, more enticing exclusives, and a hard drive you can swap out with any standard hard drive.

To be clear, you can't "modchip" a 360 the way you could a PS2 or Xbox 1. You can modify the DVD-ROM to play burned games. However this does NOT allow playing region locked imports. There is no way other than a JTAG modded 360 to play imports that are region locked on the wrong region console. I'm pretty sure on a JTAG modded 360 you could change the region or get some sort of modified dash that would run it anyway.

PS3 has no region locking on PS3 games. Import as you please.

If you are serious about online gaming, 360 is the way to go. If you will only casually maybe play online, PS3 might be fine. If you are into exploits, buy a PS3 now and do not update to firmware 3.42, you want 3.41 which can be exploited to run unauthorized software. You'll be unable to go online though. With 360 you can modify your DVD-ROM to play burns and it does work online. However you need to be sure to use the latest hacked firmware, and you need to verify all burns you make to avoid banning. Even still in the future it may be possible to detect you and get banned.

In the end you will choose whichever system you think you'll get more use out of, whichever has more features or games you will play.

MottZilla wrote:PS3 has no region locking on PS3 games. Import as you please.

TBH, it really came down to the games more than anything else, and the PS3 has more that I want to play. Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance, Yakuza... plus the updated re-releases of God of War and Sly Cooper (with hopefully more on the way - Prince of Persia FTW!). The 360 has some good ones too, but the PS3 has more that I want. So yeah.

EDIT: Also, Blu-Ray. Not that we have any films at the moment, but it'd be nice to rent one every once in a while. Also, my sister could play Buzz! Well, maybe. If I'm in a good mood and feel like letting her. She's buying the controllers though.

I'm not into online gaming, though that could change if I really get into a game. The online aspect is more for Achievements/Trophies, so I can swing my internet-cock around and brag about how big it is. Yeah, I'm petty. Sue me. It's also for DLC that doesn't make it to PC games (PoP '08 and Tomb Raider Underworld, I'm looking at both of you). Though again, there's not too many of those. I find most DLC to be rubbish, but there's a few that pique my interest.

Thanks for clearing up the modchip thing MottZilla, and thanks to everyone else for your time and thoughts. You guys are awesome at explaining stuff!

Masamune wrote:If you connect to XBL with a detectable mod that's a chip, custom firmware, or otherwise, your console will be banned from XBL. Your XBL account will be fine, but your console will be banned. Currently, the 360 mod community assumes that mods are detected whether you're connected to XBL or not, and that your system flags itself, and then sends the flag whenever you do connect.

Also, many games are just region free, so check that out.

franpa wrote:I heard the hackers have worked out how to change what the console reports to XBL thus allowing it back online as your account is not banned.

Hey ho, another question.

What, exactly, is the point to Achievements/Trophies besides bragging rights? I'm a little confused, and a quick Google search doesn't turn up much other than sites with lists of Achievements/Trophies. The Wikipedia pages are also a little confusing, and I'm not finding much info on PS3 Trophies either. If someone could just give me a quick into to the systems, that'd be very much appreciated.

Also: am I wrong in thinking that XBox Achievements give you small amounts of points that, if you get enough of, you can spend in the store? Or are they, again, just for bragging rights?

It's all bragging rights. I think rumors flew about being able to get something for them, but the truth is all they are is a record of what you may have done in a game. One of the issues is it's easy to obtain them through glitches or loading hacked save game files. So basically they are just there for you to do whatever you want with, including ignore them.

The only thing to add to that is nowadays, certain achievements can unlock free gamerpics or avatar clothing. Though this is very rare. Most of the time they are just to show your friends what you've accomplished. For instance, if you click that box in my signature, you can go to my 360 profile page where you can see my achievements. In that way you can see what I've played and how deeply I've gone in those games.

I see. Thanks again, guys.

The points earned via achievements are just for bragging rights. The achievements themselves however, I find gives a sense of accomplishment for doing tasks in a game.

Hey, me again. Got some more questions. Woo.

First up - if I delete a save game for a PS3 game, does that delete the trophies for that game as well? Or do I keep the trophies no matter what?

Secondly - I know there's a PS3 controller that looks like a 360 one, but I don't like the XBox controller. So my question is - is there an XBox 360 controller that looks/feels like a PlayStation one, or a way to use a Playstation controller on a 360?

Trophies are stored in your profile, not in the game. So they stick around unless you delete your entire profile. On the development PS3s, you can select a specific game's trophies, press triangle, and select delete to get rid of that game's trophies. But I think that's just a development function to allow us developers to test changes to the game's trophies.

Yeah, there's no 'Delete' option on my PS3Slim, so I guess that is a developer's only option. Thanks for clearing that up.

Now, about that controller... Anyone know of anything?

All I know of with regards to swapping the cases of controllers is that one guy that manages to turn many consoles into portable devices. He doesn't do it for a living (so I hear) so you very likely won't be able to pay him to make one for you.

Nevermind, I've found one.

I dunno how much microsoft would like you playing with a ps3 controller on a 360. I've heard of people getting banned for using modified/unauthorized controllers, but in those cases the people had modded in turbo fire to get an upper hand in online games. The 360 is a great console, though. There is the whole red ring problem, which recently claimed our 360 after 3 years (as soon as the warranty ran out, and as soon as microsoft released a new version of the 360. hmm....). But if you get one that is a couple of years old it can be modded without chips. It'll be banned from the internet, but if you've got the money you can keep a "legit" console for live play.

From what I've heard the ps3 has some nice exclusives, but I wouldn't know personally. We just use ours for movies since we can't afford to buy games for all the latest consoles, and we weren't expecting to have a ps3 anyway. My brother brought it with him when he moved in. I don't know what the modding scene is like for ps3, but I imagine it is more complicated since it took them a long time to crack it and professional modders charge more to do a ps3 than a 360.

The more recent 360s can't be modded without a chip, which is also expensive, but they are supposed to be much less prone to hardware failure.

Okay, wow.

From what I can tell through a quick Google search, the controller converter I linked to in my last post seems to work. Not 100% sure if it'll do so with a PS3Slim, but it's a fiver. I'll live if it doesn't. And for the record, I just wanted to use a Playstation controller, which is what I've grown up and am therefore extremely confortable with, on an XBox 360, which I intend to get at some point in the near future.

In case you hadn't noticed, I did get a PS3. It's a great console (expecially as I can watch copied DVDs straight off the bat, but you didn't hear that from me), and I've already gotten two Platinum trophies, with plenty more on the way (Darksiders on Extreme difficulty is hard). Check my sig for more details. Bear in mind I don't tent to buy games - I just rent them from an online rental service, which is why I've got some rather weird titles there! Since I'm an achievement/trophy whore, every time I rent a game, I try to get them all. Only time I gavce up was with 3D Dot Game Heroes, which I really just didn't like at all. I'll probably rent it again at some point just to get that sodding platinum trophy, but I won't enjoy it. Damn my gaming OCD.

The modding scene for the PS3 isn't something I'm particularly familiar with, but I gather that it's pretty much limited to the PS3 Jailbreak. Since I've updated my console to the latest version, I couldn't use it even if I wanted to (which I don't). As for the 360... I think that was rather neatly explained earlier in the thread.

Darth Marsden wrote: (Darksiders on Extreme difficulty is hard).

Cloral wrote:Glad to see you're playing it that way. It makes the game a whole lot more fun when the enemies are actually threatening and you have to actually make use of your reperotoire of moves to survive. And finishing it is very satisfying.

[Size="1"]*That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.[/Size]

Human_Wormbaby wrote:I dunno how much microsoft would like you playing with a ps3 controller on a 360. I've heard of people getting banned for using modified/unauthorized controllers, but in those cases the people had modded in turbo fire to get an upper hand in online games. The 360 is a great console, though. There is the whole red ring problem, which recently claimed our 360 after 3 years (as soon as the warranty ran out, and as soon as microsoft released a new version of the 360. hmm....). But if you get one that is a couple of years old it can be modded without chips. It'll be banned from the internet, but if you've got the money you can keep a "legit" console for live play.

From what I've heard the ps3 has some nice exclusives, but I wouldn't know personally. We just use ours for movies since we can't afford to buy games for all the latest consoles, and we weren't expecting to have a ps3 anyway. My brother brought it with him when he moved in. I don't know what the modding scene is like for ps3, but I imagine it is more complicated since it took them a long time to crack it and professional modders charge more to do a ps3 than a 360.

The more recent 360s can't be modded without a chip, which is also expensive, but they are supposed to be much less prone to hardware failure.

I have an adapter to use a PS2 controller I bought for the 360 so I could play Mega Man 9, 10, Street Fighter, etc.

You can modify Xbox 360's to play burned games without any "chips". However it depends on the model of the DVD-ROM what all you need to do. The latest drives require certain PCB traces cut and they'll sell you this board you can then solder onto it which has a switch on it. However you could do all this without their board. The older drives sometimes require nothing more than your PC with the right SATA chipset. Some older ones require other tools and all benefit from the connectivity kit for powering the drive. The reason being that if you powered the drive with the 360 on, the 360 in theory might be able to note for Microsoft that it booted up with no response from the DVDROM.

PS3 modding is not complicated. You buy a programmable USB device and put something on it. You plug the USB device into the PS3 and turn it on pressing the eject button after pressing power. That is all. No opening of the PS3 is needed. All that is needed is Firmware version 3.41 or lower. Just because assholes charge more money to mod it doesn't mean its harder. It's much lower risk, basically none, no opening of the system needed.

And about the "most recent" 360s, the Slim ones. They can not be modded 'yet'. But it's known to be coming. However I advise against modding the 360 unless you enjoy keeping up with the hacking scene to avoid getting banned when things change. It always seems to happen. The PS3 is much more friendly since few people care about online play and would rather download games to their HDD and have homebrew like emulators.

Darth Marsden wrote:Bollocks. It just means I die all the time and constantly get pissed off. But at least finishing it on Apocalypic difficulty (small correction there) means I don't have to play the game more than once. Don't get me wrong, when it's not constantly kicking my arse it's an entertaining little game, but it's not really one that warrants repeat playings*.

[Size="1"]*That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.[/Size]

Oh, and I've got one piece of advice for you: practice blocking. There is an enemy later in the game that you absolutely have to block in order to be able to beat. If you are out of practice, he will kick your ass over and over again.