Some folks who have been busy hacking apart the new Xbox 360 console from Microsoft claim to have worked out how to dump the contents of game discs for the system, allowing them to be copied and examined. However, the hackers have yet to work out how to get these copies to play. Team PI Coder - a Dutch hacker group - has posted details of the file system for the game discs, along with a program to extract files from them and example source code. Should Microsoft be worried? Well, not too much, according to Gamesindustry.biz.
At present, there is no way to run copied games or any form of unauthorised code on the Xbox 360, and the cracking of the disc format is a relatively simple move - since the Xbox 360 merely uses a modified version of the discs used by the original Xbox, whose format is widely understood.
In fact, although several teams around the world are known to be working on breaking the security of the Xbox 360, so far little progress has been made in this regard. The original Xbox was one of the most widely hacked consoles ever, thanks to its PC-style architecture and weak security - both things that have changed on the Xbox 360.