It looks like China's piracy market has recently gotten another pillar to grow on. With the development of the flash hacks applicable to the Xbox 360's disc drive, illegally copied 360 games have spread in China like wildfire. Vendors sell games like Hitman: Blood Money for around $3.50. Even newer games, Ninety-Nine Nights for example, are almost instantly available.

Certain stores in Shanghai apparently even offer to flash Xbox 360s for free. However, due to the price of the Xbox 360 and the relative low wages in China, not many people can afford the console, so this limits the popularity of Xbox 360 piracy somewhat. Pirated Xbox 1 and Playstation 2 discs are still keeping the pole-position.

Microsoft will eventually try to strike back, be it with downloadable system updates via Xbox Live, which will make the exploit useless, or other methods. Back in May, Microsoft's reaction to the newly-discovered hacks was, "The core security system has not been broken. However, on some Xbox 360 consoles the authentication protocol between the optical disc drive and the console may be attacked via a complex software and hardware modification which could allow people to play illegally copied and modified games. We continue to invest in the security of the platform and will respond appropriately as unauthorized activity is identified".

Given the nature of the exploits, which are rather easy to do even for inexperienced people, their response needs to come sooner rather than later.