But I don’t use live, and will never pay for the service, so I’d love to find a working 360 for under $50.

thanks!

And Zandar’s got a great point.

Sounds like a deal at $40 to me.

- Mike

I’d probably be willing to pay twice that. For an otherwise capable gaming console, that’s still a damn good deal.

For reference, used Sega Genesis consoles still regularly sell for $20.

The HD access for almost everything is disabled on a banned 360, savegames from any other 360 (and the banned one from before the ban) are corrupted if you open then on a banned 360.

URL is http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EkVZyEFyFpeyBGdGIN.php

Extract from a more in-depth explanation on XBox Scene :-

Hard Drive installs are now disabled on the banned console. This means any disk-based games you have will no longer play off of the hard drive. If you attempt to play a game, it will tell you that it was installed on a different 360 and needs to be deleted/installed again. When you delete the game and attempt to install it, you are given a message telling you that it is not supported. There is no way to fix this, that functionality is simply gone from the banned 360.

The hard drive itself is left untouched – you can place it in another 360, even an unbanned one, and it will still work just fine. You do NOT need to reformat it to regain any kind of functionality. Any installed games will need to be reinstalled for the console you want to play them on. This is normal behaviour and happens when swapping HDDs on unbanned/legit 360′s.

Windows Media Centre functionality is disabled. It is still possible to stream video/music content via the video library.

Your Gamertag may be corrupted. This does not mean your gamertag has been banned, you can recover it using any live-capable 360, however ANY ACHIVEMENTS YOU HAVE EARNED SINCE BEING BANNED WILL BE LOST. Your gamertag will be corrupted EVERY SINGLE TIME it is used on a banned console. This means you cannot use your banned console to play backups offline just to get achievements – it wont work, the second you put your profile back on a good 360, it will be corrupted and all progress lost. There is no way around this.

The same applies to game saves – if you access a game save on a banned 360, it too will be corrupted when accessed on a legit/unbanned 360! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! There is no way around this, either.

Your XBLA games and DLC will still be valid, however to play them on a different 360 you will need to be signed into Xbox Live. This is normal behaviour on unbanned/legit 360′s as well. They may be corrupted and have to be re-downloaded if you attempt to access them on a banned 360. You can transfer all of your downloaded content to a new 360 here: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration/default.htm however note that you can only do it once every 12 months.

So, in summary:
Your Banned 360:
* Cannot go on Xbox Live
* Cannot install games to the HDD
* Cannot use Windows Media Centre extender
* Cannot be used to get achievements from backups without corrupting your profile

You cannot do anything about this, short of buying a new 360.

So now we’ve got the legit 360 hooked to the TV and the banned one hooked to my monitor at my desk, which at 24″ and 1080p, is pretty sweet for games. We’ll still buy games, but I’ll still play illegal copies too (I don’t actually download them; a friend does and he sends me the discs).

I’ll probably do what I do with music and movies– get my illegal copy to try it out, and then if I don’t get sick of it quickly, pony up for the real deal. It’s no secret that most games are garbage (look at the shovelware on the Wii), so I feel like if I try out 10 or 12 games a year that I play for two or three hours before getting bored or frustrated, I dodged a bullet. As long as I buy the ones I actually like and play through, I don’t feel bad.

Still snarfing up original Xbox 1s for conversion to XBMC media players. Only one dead one, but I bought it DOA for parts, it could be fixed with a chip to re-enable the serial number.

Thanks, MS!

For $40, I’d be willing to put up with the relatively lower number of Japanese games as compared to the PS3.

I’ll admit, I’ve pirated a few games, but I buy games as well. I usually don’t play online because I think paying extra money to access features for a game I already own is ridiculous. However, I was going online to BUY a downloadable game.

It’s kind of annoying that MS decided to cut off indie publishers from getting my money via DLC games.

I don’t really like playing online multiplayer games anyway, and I definitely don’t like the idea of paying extra for it, so I’m not selling mine. It’s nice to know I have cheap options if mine craps out, though.