360 designed to be secure, but will be hacked

Talking to BBC News Online, Microsoft has said that whilst the Xbox 360 has "Levels of security... that the hacker community has never seen before," nonetheless "Sooner or later someone will work out how to circumvent security."

Chris Satchell, from the Xbox Advanced Technology group, appears to be taking a fairly pessimisstic line when it comes to the modding and hacking of Xboxs. The original Xbox has been hacked to run Linux and home theatre applications, not to mention backup and import games.

The 360 will include security at the hardware level - this could mean TPM, we're not sure. Chris says that "One of the reasons we went with custom hardware design for all our silicon is that it allows us to build security at the silicon level."

"There're some really bright people in the world with some really expensive hardware... I'm sure sooner or later someone will work out how to circumvent security. But the way we have done the design doesn't mean that it will work on somebody else's machine."

Of course, there is one other cunning aspect to Microsoft's plan. As you might know, you can't currently use hacked Xboxs on the Xbox Live online service. With Live becoming an integral part of the 360 gaming experience, it's going to be harder to avoid using it.

What's going to happen to the 360? Will most people not bother to hack it because of the Live features? Give us your thoughts.