[WOWZY]

Hi there. Newbie here.

I've been lurking here from time to time and found alot of your posts very helpful.

Maybe I can shed a little light on the "Hacking" of the Xbox games a little. Microsoft has gone to great pains to make it the most difficult to pirate their games.

1) Xbox games are written differently than other CD/DVD discs. Normal CD/DVD's are written from the inner ring to the outer edge. Xbox games are written from the outside edge to the inner edge like an old record album. People are working right now to try to backwards copy Xbox games as we speak with not so good results. The one advantage of Xbox games being written backwards is that the games load faster because the data is moving faster on the outer edge than the inner edge.

2) Xbox games are written on DVD-9 discs. Even if you were able to copy Xbox games, the price of a DVD-9 disc is between $40-$50. So that would mean that it would be easier just to go out and buy the game.

The hackers are doing it mostly for bragging rights, but until the price of DVD-9's come down drastically it's not worth losing any sleep over.

I'm optomistic that it will be done though.