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Quite early in the life of the Xbox 360 people discovered that if some content was only available to a certain territory you could easily make a fake Xbox Live account based in the territory you wish. However, with the advent of Microsoft’s downloadable TV and movie service things have had to get much stricter.
Larry Hryb, Xbox Live Director of Programming, or Major Nelson as he is more popularly known, tells us why the new security measures have been implemented:
“Although we will continue to work on providing content and rolling out the service in other markets, US Marketplace offers will be restricted to the US only,” writes Hryb. “This means that the credit card associated with your account is required to match the billing address and country your account is set up in.“
However, Hyrb points out that “we [Microsoft] are not banning any of these Xbox Live accounts, as they can continue to use pre-paid subscription cards and Microsoft Points cards.“
So it appears it might still be possible to get round the restrictions by using pre-paid cards to top up your account, but we can’t confirm that this is the case. There are also rumours that Microsoft is checking IP addresses, with those that don’t match the territory of the account being blocked.
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