The probability of modchips/hacks becoming available to a console is directly proportional to the number of people who own that console.
It's save to say that the more popular a console is the higher percentage of hackers attempt to hack it and the more likely you are to see modchips/etc. become available.
I don't care how many protective measure are put in place plainly put, if it can allow you play games in the first place then there isn't enough protection to keep you from modding it.
There has yet to be a popular system that wasn't mod-able. for the most part the size of a particular consoles following and it's ease of modifiability, are directly porportional to that console's modding scene. The Xbox was lucky enough to receive a Jump-Start into modding when "Bunnie" made his discovery, and wrote his book, and now the Xbox has a huge moder following. Regardless of how difficult the Xbox 2 is to mod it will still be possible because of the size of the scene and the number of people working towards that end.
As for the Hard drive, most of you seem to forget the very probable rumor about the Xbox 2 having a removable Ipod like HDD storage device. I think the more recent rumors of Halo 2.5 and multiple "versions" (probably just bundles) confirm this past rumor more and more. If MS were to make this move it would make for a very expandable media center, not to mention making the HDD external would allow them to sell the Xbox without the HDD for a lower price point, as well as giving the Xbox a much smaller footprint. All without loosing down-loadable content and giving you a much more expandable way to get your music onto the Xbox and into your games.
MS is not stupid, if anything I think they will be using the modding community as a source of new ideas to add to the Xbox (Halo 2.5 on the hard drive, the recent media player expansion, different versions of the Xbox, etc.) rather than looking at ways to stop us. If they were really interested in stopping us there are a number of very inexpensive and and very detrimental things they could be doing to the design of the current Xbox.
The Xbox 2 will not suck, if anything they'll learn from the mistakes they've made and bring a much improved product in the end.
This post has been edited by twistedsymphony: Dec 28 2004, 09:37 PM