Whoa! - Microsoft solves Xbox 360 DRM issue (finally, but it will cost you!)

Xbox 360 DLC License Transfer Card

If you've been paying attention, you know the Xbox 360 has a downloadable content time bomb. When your Xbox 360 eventually dies (tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or next decade), any downloadable content you've bought and licensed for shared offline use on that console is orphaned to online use by the purchaser only - and it takes considerable effort and perserverance to get it relicensed to a replacement console.

Well, no more. Starting today you can purchase the Xbox 360 DLC License Transfer Card. This 1GB flash card permits you to perform a one-way transfer of both your content and its license from an old console to a new one. It even works directly with a secondary console, should your original console be unusable.

The catch? There are several:

• You have to buy what is essentially a $60 USB flash card that can only be used to move downloadable Xbox 360 content with licenses. You could repurchase quite a bit of content for this price.
• You can only transfer an individual license five times - which, unless you are truly unlucky, should be enough to get you through to the next console generation.
• You can't run games or store gamertags on this card. You still need to buy a standard memory card if you want to play games from something other than a hard drive.
• If you plug it into your PC, you will get an error. This no doubt is to prevent hackers from cracking the DRM by the transferring licenses to a PC.

However, there is a silver lining - if you leave the flash card plugged into your 360 when you're not transferring licensed content, it functions similar to ReadyBoost for Windows Vista and speeds up game load times for your three most recently played titles. All in all, it may not be the solution we were hoping for, but it's probably the one we should have expected...

Archive from past years:

• New Wii system update on the way
• Microsoft announces Xbox into Xbox 360 Connection Kit
• Sony announces DVD into PSP