Xbox 360 Ripping Ain’t Gonna Happen
I just received an email from Larry Hyrb, Director of Programming for Xbox Live!
Sorry Tor, for many reasons from business to technical, ripping of game titles to the Xbox 360 hard drive is not a scenario or feature we can support.
I get the business side of it, but not the technical. I guess I could go on and on and whine about it but I still can’t think of any problems that aren’t solvable here, especially not because of the technology. Case-in-point: Steam rocks, and it works. Essentially, I rip PC games to the hard drive all the time.
I can however see the publishers getting very very antsy about game ripping and possibly denying all access to a net distribution service. In ten years though, I think this is going to be the norm, and publishers in their traditional role will be left in the cold or diminished severely in power.
Microsoft, court the development studios and cut the distribution channels away.