Do you want access to Xbox Live? If you answered “Yes� then don’t attempt to modify your console. Modding, which means making hardware and firmware modifications, to a gaming console, is a usual custom among gamers. They are modding their consoles in order to achieve better performances, or, sometimes, purely in order to be able to play copied games or cheating.  

But it seems like lately Microsoft is taking serious action against those who “improved� their consoles. According to Microsoft’s Gamescore blog, the company will not allow people that have been detected with modified consoles to connect to LIVE.

The good news is that Microsoft will not ban the account, but only the gaming console. "As a result, some consumers that try to login to LIVE who we detect have illegally modified their console will get an error code (Status Code: Z: 8015 - 190D) when trying to connect to the service. These users will not have their account automatically banned from LIVE, but they will no longer be able to access the service from the console they modified. We have stated in the past that customers can only enjoy access to the Xbox LIVE community through the use of a genuine, unmodified, Xbox console and we will continue to enforce this rule to ensure the integrity of our service, the protection of our partners and the benefits of our users.", Microsoft explained.

Recently Microsoft announced that its Xbox Live service has reached 6 million members. The service was unveiled in November 2002 and since then gamers have spent over 2.3 billion hours on the network playing games online with their friends around the world. This is equal to 95 million days of gaming or over 260,000 years. With Halo 2, which is being played on both the Xbox and Xbox 360, gamers have spent over 710 million hours playing online with over a half a billion games played.