Xbox Bans Modified Consoles For Life To Fight Piracy

Users of Xbox who have modified their consoles to play pirated games have been banned for life by Microsoft and will have to purchase a new console to be able to play Xbox games online via Xbox Live again. The banned consoles will not be able to connect to Xbox Life, but their owners will have an option of using their old account on a newly purchased console. It is estimated up to one million gamers might have been affected by Microsoft's ban. Some users maintain they are not Xbox cheats and have modified their consoles for purposes other than playing pirated games, such as installing bigger hard drives or doing disk back-ups.

Questions have been raised about gamers selling their banned consoles to second-hand users without notifying them. There are reports of blacklisted consoles flooding online resale sites like Craigslist and Ebay.