Xbox 360 Modchip Site Goes Live, Suggests January 31st, 2006:

On January 2nd, InfinityMods.com posted a listing on their site for an upcoming Xbox 360 modchip called the LiThIuM I.C.E., available for purchase within 2 weeks.

On January 5th, the modchip retailer made a second posting to their site in response to the number of e-mails they had received from the first post, including details about the chips price and abilities.

Early morning January 7th, the website listed on InfinityMods\' website for the I.C.E. chip went live. At the time of this writing, the site is apparently still being modified with details about the chip, but includes one interesting piece of information: January 31st, 2006.

Under the Information tag on the website, January 31st, 2006 is listed as the When, along with other information that was included in the January 5th posting on InfiintyMods.com. The site also includes photographs of chips labeled as prototype photographs that may not be representative of the final product.

\"Sample chips will be provided to people considering bulk orders only. We can only hope that (Team I.C.E.) will soon submit a sample of the chip for independent verification over at Xbox-scene.com.\"

Whether or not the January 31st date is indicative of an actual ship date, or is an indication of when the chip will be available for pre-order is uncertain. According to the original information on InfinityMods.com, the chip would most likely be available for pre-order within two weeks, which would be about January 16th, 2006. Is the January 31st date an actual ship date, or simply an extension of the \"within two weeks\" time-line already discussed?

In a posting on InfinityMods.com, it is stated that the I.C.E. website is expected to have a complete FAQ by later tonight; since there is no FAQ at the moment, we can only hope that these questions will be addressed more completely as the site is completed.

In fact, anything on the site at the time of this writing should be considered subject to change. Not only did InfinityMods.com suggest the site would not be completed until the end of January 7th (instead of early morning), there are obvious errors on the site that you wouldn\'t expect from a completed version, such as errors in the formatting of the dates, and slight typos.

Still, the site is live. An link has been added to the front page of icemodchip.com that connects to a main ICE page, which wouldn\'t be there if they were still testing the site. We therefore consider it free game. It doesn\'t hurt to take a look at what\'s there.


Other Information on the Site:

Aside from the date, icemodchip.com also provides this information on January 7th, 2006, early morning hours:

• Under About Us: Team ICE refers to itself as \"new to the console scene.\" This suggests that they have no affiliation with the PS2 modification team sometimes mistakenly referred to as Team ICE, often associated with the Magic Ice modchip.
  
  
• The ICE website contains a thumbs-up to other modification teams, including Team DMS, Xecuter, SmartXX, Ghost, and Viper. These teams are all well known as established modchip developers for current generation consoles.
  
  
• The I.C.E. chip will be capable of, \"Direct Boot XboX 360 ISO\'s, Rips, and Dumps\".
  
  
• Mass production of the chip apparently began on January 5th. A sample of the I.C.E. chip was sent to InfinityMods.com, which the site refers to as their affiliate, for testing on December 28th, 2005. A fair warning that this does not necessarily mean that the chip has been independently verified. There are a number of indications that suggest InfinityMods.com and ICEModchip.com are owned by the same people.
  
  
• According to the site, the \"Backup routine (was) discovered successfully. Chip production started,\" on December 22nd, 2006 (we assume they mean 2005). What this means is not exactly clear. Does this imply that the process for running a back-up was perfected about 14 days before final mass-production? Pure speculation.
  
  
• Testing for the NTSC version of the I.C.E. chip is complete, but the PAL version is still being tested.
  
  
• Sample chips will be provided to people considering bulk orders only. We can only hope that they\'ll soon submit a sample of the chip for independent verification over at Xbox-scene.com.
  
  
• Team ICE is interested in working with affiliates and resellers, but they are limiting the number of resellers to 4 resellers per country or province.
  
  
• Currently the only reseller listed is InfinityMods.com.
  
  
• The Official Diagrams section is still under construction.