The Chipping Forecast

‘Chipping’ has been a common, if largely illegal practice in the world of gaming hardware for nearly a decade now. If you’re not familiar with the term, it initially described the act of adapting games consoles solely for the purposes of circumventing copy-protection and region-coding, allowing gamers to buy and swap cheap pirated titles and avoid commercial prices.So why is this practice of interest to usability and customer experience consultants? Well chipping has expanded its horizons beyond physical media piracy in recent times. Increasingly ingenious modchips are available to unlock the processing power of today’s consoles. Unscrupulous gamers can install operating systems, choosing from a wide range of Linux distros and other open source OS, or even Mac OSX. Couple this with the increasingly sophisticated connectivity options of modern machines, and you can quickly see how gamers are transforming locked consoles offering gameplay through downloadable clients, into far more powerful open connected clients and even web servers.

The home gaming scene is pretty much dominated by three consoles – Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3, and the Nintendo Wii. Handheld devices such as the Nintendo DS Lite, Sony PSP and the LeapFrog Leapster 2 have some say in the market, but the big three account for over 70 percent market share. Over the past three years, an increasing number of Generation Y console owners have begun chipping and using their consoles to hop over walled gardens and make the most of open access. The risk of breaking an extremely expensive games console through chipping no longer holds so much fear for gamers who have seen console prices plummet.

In the right, or wrong, hands, a chipped Xbox 360 Elite, for example, is an extremely handy device, not just for downloading and sharing illegal software, but also as a formidable gaming platform. And with its 120GB hard drive, PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon processor, Falcon 65nm chipset, USB 2.0 ports, 100Mbps Ethernet and Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g adapters, the same casinos and gambling services that are open to PC users are accessible in glorious widescreen straight to the living room. Piracy is rife through illegal downloads and emulation of all manner of other platforms. So is access to adult gaming services.

It’s not just Xbox owners of course. I recently heard that large numbers of early adopter 30-somethings were getting together to play poker in a whole new way, using wireless controllers on Wiis in their living rooms. Because it’s illegal, and perhaps because it’s easier to stay in denial, internet gambling companies haven’t yet opened up their eyes to the fact that non-PC gamers are enjoying their services. The question is then – are they actually missing an opportunity here?

Gambling developers have become used to the idea that their offerings are only used by people with a keyboard and a mouse. Sure some of them develop for the smaller mobile screen, but they have sidestepped the enormous implications that monetising living room games consoles might bring. These early adopters, outlaws or not, very possibly represent the green shoots of a whole new audience, a new way of interaction. Current gambling portals might look pretty snazzy on a PC using an exacting pointing device, but I’m betting they’re very hard to navigate with a Wii controller. Sooner or later a developer is going to be first to tweak their UI to exploit these new players, and then what? Where could it lead? Ultimately? Legitimately? Well, shopping, social media, you name it really.

Of course when this step comes, customer experience agencies will inevitably have a role to play in educating gaming companies on the access trends of a new user base. The new revenue streams are obvious, and could soon be legally tapped – perhaps somebody should start preparing the ground work.