Frank Yu a former Microsoft China employee has given us the lowdown on console piracy in China. He doesn't reveal too much except for what is already known, the Wii is modded, the Xbox 360 is modded and there are chips for sale which can be disabled and so forth as well as stating that MS are always impressed by the speed and efficiency that hackers work on the motherboard. Another interesting point is that he believes it is not illegal to sell the chips just actually sell consoles pre-modified. And lastly, Yu remarked that you can buy the whole library of DS games on a DVD for around $12.



I know the pirates and the modders in China. They are able to chip the Japanese Wii but the US Wii has more protection (Editor's Note and, presumably not hacked because of the availability of the Japanese Wii). For games like Paper Mario, that needed a firmware update on the Internet which even modded Wii's could get. On the new Metroid, the Internet update does not seem to work for modded Wiis this time...(no doubt) a solution is being created.



Yes, the Xbox 360 hardware is totally broken for pirated games...however, if you leave your mod chip active MS will detect it and shut you out of Xbox Live. I have heard rumours of mod chips that can be switched off so that it toggle between a modded Xbox and an unmodded one to go on Live. I have brought many MS Xbox people to the shops here in China that do the modding (its not illegal to install the chip as far as I know but it is illegal to technically sell the console) (Editor's Note: Frank used to work for Microsoft in China). Folks at MS are always impressed by the speed and workaround that hackers and modders do to the motherboard. Of course we don' t tell them we're MS...there are a lot of foreigners who go to these shops too.



Not too much demand for PS3 here...ergo no modding or pirated games that I know of. The whole DS library is available on DVDs here for perhaps USD 12 for the whole set. You still need a Supercard or R4 mod/card (Editor's Note: see previous articles on Nintendo piracy) for the DS but there is no need to install anything, its just a cartridge like any other game with a slot for a Micro SD memory card.



News-Source: MaxConsole