Xmas – Thinking Ahead and Buying Moddable Electronics

With Christmas almost here, I thought I would share  short story with you guys and how this spawned an idea for this article.

Last week at the office, I had an Xmas party and during lunch I had heard one of my fellow co-workers talking about how she spent all this money over the past weekend for gifts for her 9 and 12 year old sons.  Among the gifts included a Nintendo DS Lite and the Sony PSP Go.

As I sat and listened to her story, she ranted on how she bought a game for each handheld and how expensive it was to purchase these games. We all know over the course of time the children will quickly grow tired of these games, and then the parent will have to eventually buy new games.

How about you?  Are you sick of buying new or used games over and over for your game consoles or your portable gaming device?  So when I listened to her story, all I could do was nod my head and agree prices were outrageous. We are in a recession after all you know.

There was a part of me where I wanted to tell her of this dark little secret that I knew about electronics, but then at the same time I knew if I said what I knew, I would be shunned forever.

What did I know that she didn’t?  🙂  I knew that if she knew what I knew, she could save a boatload of money in games alone if she knew the art of modding (or if their kids did).

Maybe you are a parent right now (or just a gamer in general) and you are sick and tired of buying games all the time. What if I told you that there are certain game consoles you can mod so you can play backed up games or even downloaded games off the Internet? *gasp*

Yes, I know.  It’s wrong to download a game that you don’t legally own, but let’s face the facts.  There are gamers out there who have modded Xbox 360’s playing games they downloaded off the Internet.  This is their “FU” to Microsoft for giving them the red rings of death time after time after time.  Is it right?  No.  Is it wrong?  Yes.  Will it stop people from modding their consoles? No.

So what advice do I have to give this Xmas season?  Here is some unconventional advice for those who are about to go buy a game system or handheld.  Why not go buy something that is moddable?  What is the point of buying Assassin Creed 2 for the PS3, when technically you can get it for the Xbox 360 for free and save 60 bucks?   😛

What does it even mean to mod a console?  In short, you are making a modification (it can be quite easy) to the electronic device so it can play backed up games (copied games).  How is this possible? There are a lot of tutorials and guides out there showing you how, but to keep it simplistic here is a list of electronics that can be  modded to play backed up games.

Moddable electronics include:

• Nintendo Wii
• Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360
• Sony Playstation 2
• Sony PSP (not the PSP-GO)
• Nintendo DS (not the lite)

Why no PS3? Why no Nintendo DS Lite?  Why no PSP-Go?  It’s because these electronics cannot be modded. The Nintendo DS for a mod uses a GBA cartridge slot to run the mod chip.  The Nintendo DS Lite has this GBA slot removed, so there goes your modchip.

Technically, there is a workaround for the PSP-G0, but it is so much easier to go onto Craigslist and purchase the old version of the Sony PSP.

Here is a good example. Don’t tell me this won’t light up your eyes when you hear this story.

A brand new Xbox 360 package is approximately $250, depending on the model you get.  If you get the CK3 modding kit (approximately 50 bucks), it helps you flash the firmware of the DVD drive to let you play dual layered DVDs.  A spindle of 25 Verbatim Dual Layered +R dvds is about $20.  So far without taxes you just spent $320 dollars.  Now let’s pretend you bought 25 Xb0x 360 games at $60 a piece (excluding tax). The games alone equals to $1,500!

Now this is where you are smarter.  A month or two ago Microsoft banned tons of Xbox 360s for using cheats or modded consoles that were playing games on Xbox Live.  You can find many of these banned Xbox 360 consoles for cheap on Craigslist and much less than $250.  If you don’t care for a used Xbox 360, I suggest maybe going to Craigslist for some Xmas shopping.

Maybe you will get lucky, and the console is modded. If the console is not modded, you can always buy the tools to mod it.

I know someone who bought a PS2 from Craigslist for $40 back in the day.  He went out and bought swap magic for $30 online which is a disc that helps you boot backed up games.  Now 140 PS2 games later, he is on top of the world and who is laughing now?  If we say that each PS2 game is approximately $30, that comes to a total of $4,200 for games alone. Plus, he has a bunch of imported games from Japan that cannot be bought in the USA.  Sounds ridiculous, yes?  But you just saved a lot of money in gaming.

Does this article perk your ears and your wallet?  It should.  This is a subject that is not talked about broadly among the community, and there is a large gaming population out there that have modded consoles who don’t have a need to play online and just pirate games all the time.

So back to my story about the mother and her two sons. The sons nor the mother know about this modding business, and they never will.  The mom will continue to spend money for the games, while the teenager down the street spends no money at all on his games and will have a collection 10x larger than than what the mom buys for her children any day.

Are you interested now in modding?  Want to save a buck or two?  I don’t blame you. Please visit this article to learn more about modding and be amazed at this dark little world.  Need some help or modding advice?  We can help. Just let us know and we can point you in the right direction. I hope this unconventional advice will make you or someone else a very happy gamer in the future. 🙂

The Unofficial Console Modding Portal