First, the bad news – We’re not going to be able to implement Xbox 360 compatibility on our own. Looking into it, the security the 360 uses is based on a pretty hardcore chip, and while that chip has been recently hacked, doing so involves using an electron microscope, and might only be valid for one chip at a time. If anyone knows any contacts within Microsoft who might be able to talk to us regarding licensing these chips, we’d love to hear from you, but like most other big developers, Microsoft hasn’t been too keen on letting tiny companies get their hands on those chips. I can’t blame them; if there were hundreds of cheap 3rd party controllers making the Xbox 360 experience much worse, or allowing for cheating on multiplayer online games, nobody blames the controller manufacturers, just Microsoft. Still, for now, it looks like native 360 compatibility is out. However, if you’re really interested in using the V1 on the 360, send us an e-mail, since if you’re willing to use the circuit board from an existing guitar controller, we can probably work something out for that pretty easily.
On the good news side of things, after some re-jiggering and testing, we’ve merged the Wii and PS3 firmware! This means that you don’t have to do a firmware update to switch between the systems anymore, and it’s going to be easier to figure out which firmware you need. Instead of V1_Wii.hex and V1_USB.hex series’ of binaries, they’re being replaced by the OpenChordV1.hex series. Most people should need the 12MHz hex file, but there are still some 16 Mhz boards out there – Anyone who bought kits at PAX or since then has the 12 MHz board, but to check, if you see 16.000 on the little silver oval on the PCB, then you’ve got a 16 MHz crystal, so you’ll need the 16 MHz code. Or send us an e-mail if you’d like a 12 MHz crystal; we’re more than happy to drop one in the mail for you, free of charge.
