One store closes, another opens.
What is it?
One thing that exists on other modded console scenes that many people wanted to see on the Xbox 360 is a homebrew store. That is — a free store accessible from the console to download community-made homebrew apps, games, and emulators. After years of wishing someone would make one, I decided to learn Lua and make this a reality using the Aurora homebrew dashboard’s script system. Luckily, Cheato of Alpha Archive had made a similar content distribution system for Halo files that I used as a starting point.
At the moment, I’ve uploaded all of the Xbox 360 homebrew games, apps, dashboards, and emulators I could find and they are available through the store. It will automatically download and install the content to either the locations specified in your Aurora settings for homebrew/applications/emulators (if you specified some) or to a default path depending on the content type. Note that all content hosted on the ConsoleMods repo is homebrew and NOT officially released games/apps or other copyrighted content.
I have also added an option in the GUI to enter a URL to connect to other repos for anyone who wants to host their own repo (instructions and examples on this page). The system is flexible and not limited to just games, apps, and emulators. Anyone looking to host a repo can specify where the content gets installed, so you can theoretically use this system to make a repository for game mods, custom maps, or even user-generated files such as Halo 3 maps and custom games — which is something I’m in talks with multiple people about.
Downloading the Homebrew Store
To download the homebrew store, simply open the Aurora dashboard, press the Back button > Scripts > Aurora Repo Browser > Utility Scripts > Xbox 360 Homebrew Store. It will automatically download the script and it will be available to run.
Alternatively, you can download the files directly from the ConsoleMods wiki and put them in your scripts folder, located at: hdd1:\\Aurora\User\Scripts\Utility\.
Conclusion
In short, if you have a modded Xbox 360, you can install the homebrew store and have easy access to various homebrew games, ports, and apps. Hopefully more repos will come online soon, serving up even more content as the Xbox Live services on Xbox 360 are being sunset and official user-generated content distribution systems are shutdown.