BeyondUnreal
11 Apr 2008, 23:19
<p>In <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=131505">an interview</a> with Eurogamer, Microsoft's XNA group general manager, Chris Satchell, cast doubt on the ability to allow Xbox 360 downloadable user mods for games like Unreal Tournament 3. Here he contrasts the peer review system used for XNA content with modifications of retail games.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now the modding's a little different. Yes it could help rate mods, but the core issue of modding is what we talked about earlier - if you're not running in that sandbox, how do you guarantee security?<br />
<br />
That's really where we've got stuck - making sure that nothing will hurt the user's system, and I'm a little disturbed when I think about other systems and people using what we call native code - code that goes right down to the metal - and then allowing people to run script mods on top of that without the right security measures. It could be really dangerous.<br />
<br />
We've drawn a hard line because we very much care about security, and it seems like some other platforms don't seem to care quite as much. That kind of worries me for consumers. But all I can control is what we do on our platform, so that's where I'm going to focus - we're going to keep you safe because that's really important to us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hopefully, we'll find out a little more about this as we do some hands-on testing with the Xbox 360 version next week.</p>
More... (http://www.beyondunreal.com/view_story.php?id=11718)
<blockquote>
<p>Now the modding's a little different. Yes it could help rate mods, but the core issue of modding is what we talked about earlier - if you're not running in that sandbox, how do you guarantee security?<br />
<br />
That's really where we've got stuck - making sure that nothing will hurt the user's system, and I'm a little disturbed when I think about other systems and people using what we call native code - code that goes right down to the metal - and then allowing people to run script mods on top of that without the right security measures. It could be really dangerous.<br />
<br />
We've drawn a hard line because we very much care about security, and it seems like some other platforms don't seem to care quite as much. That kind of worries me for consumers. But all I can control is what we do on our platform, so that's where I'm going to focus - we're going to keep you safe because that's really important to us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hopefully, we'll find out a little more about this as we do some hands-on testing with the Xbox 360 version next week.</p>
More... (http://www.beyondunreal.com/view_story.php?id=11718)