There is growing confusion surrounding a recent announcement by the ICE mod chip team claiming that they have a working chip for X360 in production. The initial reaction to the announcement late last week was one of disbelief as it caught everyone off-guard, including the X360 community which has been very active in 'investigating' the new console.
Critics of the announcement claim that the image displayed on the relevant website is a fake and pictures a standard, widely available microcontroller board, claiming to be the I.C.E. v1.0. The image was promptly pulled from the U.S. ICE website and their statement reads: Previous pictures that were posted was due to a falling out between the team webmaster, and the team lead. Those pictures are confirmed fake, and not a prototype whatsoever, please delete them. Intriguingly, the U.K. version of the ICE website still features the controversial image.
Many gamers claim that the ICE team is trustworthy since it is not asking for any money for a pre-order, claiming that they need pre-orders in order to determine the quantities of the chip that they will order. The USD 70 they will be asking for the chip is not an extravagant price but the delay the announced today for security reasons did not do their credibility much good.
Meanwhile the well-known and respected, Team Xecuter, has also produced a comment on the ongoing debate which further confuses the issue by stating that something is about to happen but that it won't be on an XBox scale. The statement also suggests that what will be revealed will not be able to run unsigned code i.e. no XBMC but may be good for running backups. Their website states: For a completely "hacked" 360 don't expect anything on the scale of the first Xbox - at least not for a long, long time, however you can expect to see a hack of some sort soon - not only from Xecuter but from at least one other group of guys we have spoken to. Unsigned code is looking unlikely atm but booting of raw dumps maybe quite possible - but no where near as much fun or scope as Xbox1 mods. Kudos to M$ for their security on this one, however there is always a way.....
Details of how this may have been achieved vary but most things you will read about are mere speculation and range from comments on hacked DVD firmware to a special cable that confuses XBox 360 into thinking it is running an official DVD.
Stay with MG for further coverage and news regarding the first next-generation console.
