4 ms·

It seems a bit late for the Nintendo 3DS. I wonder if it has anything to do with shared code between this and the upcoming Nintendo Switch. Nintendo has a had a

It seems a bit late for the Nintendo 3DS. I wonder if it has anything to do with shared code between this and the upcoming Nintendo Switch. Nintendo has a had an amazing year and I'm really glad they're doing this nonetheless.

problems 10y ago
Kind of sucks for the homebrew scene though, which is pretty much the only kind of exploit you saw with any real success on these platforms.
- delroth 10y ago
  Yeah right. The homebrew scene on 3DS was literally kickstarted by piggy-backing on a special cartridge made exclusively for piracy purpose (which was exploiting a 3DS firmware vulnerability). People developed the exploits for piracy first then the homebrew developers came. The first few homebrew software for 3DS were shipped as modified "launcher.dat" files for Gateway 3DS. This shifted later on in the console's lifetime, but at that point people had already developed "backup loaders" and most users were already in for the piracy more than the homebrew. Not that homebrew isn't great, but it would be a complete lie to say piracy isn't the biggest application of these exploits.
  - striking 10y ago
    See, if Nintendo had provided a simple way for developers to play around in their own consoles (as simple as "the 3DS will run files that are signed by you, in its regular sandbox; we provide no support for this feature") we likely wouldn't have seen the newest ground-leveling exploits. Say what you will about the piracy scene, but Nintendo almost killed it with the newest software updates. It took passion and experience, not money, to cause the newest events of what happened here. What if that passion could have been redirected into cool homebrew in the first place?
    - Forlien 10y ago
      I'd argue that 3DS piracy would have continued even if Nintendo opened up for homebrew. There's money to be made off of it - if there weren't, the initial exploit with a special cartridge wouldn't have been developed. On a sidenote, do companies in general want to allow home brew on game consoles? Especially if they're selling them at a loss or at break-even, since they're not going to make money if people buy the consoles just for homebrew purposes.
      - gcb0 10y ago
        you miss the point that the pirating devices only come to existence because of the homebrew hackers.
        delroth 10y ago
        How did the homebrew hackers help in the creation of the Gateway 3DS?
        794CD01 10y ago
        They provide camoflauge. If homebrew did not exist, such products could be uncontroversially classified as piracy tools, allowing Nintendo to aggressively remove them from the market. Instead they are in a bittorrent-like situation where even though the vast majority of the use is for copyright infringing activity, there is a loud minority that use it for something legal, and all the pirates pretend to be in that minority when accused of breaking the law. This culture of "homebrew" truly blossomed during the DS era with a huge number of commercially produced rewriteable cartridges, and 3DS piracy is largely a continuation of that.
      - johncolanduoni 10y ago
        > On a sidenote, do companies in general want to allow home brew on game consoles? Especially if they're selling them at a loss or at break-even, since they're not going to make money if people buy the consoles just for homebrew purposes. The PS3 had this issue when the US Air Force built a super computer out of them a while back[1], since you could run Linux on the original PS3 without a jailbreak. They latter pushed an update that disable this feature in response. [1]: http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercompute...
BoorishBears 10y ago
To me it seems especially late since the platform has been broken wide open. The "jailbreaks" now have access to both processors used to boot the system and games, so they can run code before the system loads and intercept writes to their memory locations. They can block exploits in new firmware versions (and have), but the system has sold so many units there doesn't seem to be a realistic chance of "breakable" systems running out for those interested.
- striking 10y ago
  Especially considering the hacks allow you to have more than one 3DS firmware installed at a time, allowing you to do things that require a clean slate while still being hacked. As long as you don't install some theoretical update that blocked all the exploits directly onto your real NAND, or as long as you don't buy a fresh 3DS with this update baked in already... you're honestly all set.
  - rhinoceraptor 10y ago
    Also, $200 for a new 3DS is still less than what a couple of games would have cost if you bought them retail.

problems 10y ago

Kind of sucks for the homebrew scene though, which is pretty much the only kind of exploit you saw with any real success on these platforms.

delroth 10y ago
Yeah right. The homebrew scene on 3DS was literally kickstarted by piggy-backing on a special cartridge made exclusively for piracy purpose (which was exploiting a 3DS firmware vulnerability). People developed the exploits for piracy first then the homebrew developers came. The first few homebrew software for 3DS were shipped as modified "launcher.dat" files for Gateway 3DS. This shifted later on in the console's lifetime, but at that point people had already developed "backup loaders" and most users were already in for the piracy more than the homebrew. Not that homebrew isn't great, but it would be a complete lie to say piracy isn't the biggest application of these exploits.
- striking 10y ago
  See, if Nintendo had provided a simple way for developers to play around in their own consoles (as simple as "the 3DS will run files that are signed by you, in its regular sandbox; we provide no support for this feature") we likely wouldn't have seen the newest ground-leveling exploits. Say what you will about the piracy scene, but Nintendo almost killed it with the newest software updates. It took passion and experience, not money, to cause the newest events of what happened here. What if that passion could have been redirected into cool homebrew in the first place?
  - Forlien 10y ago
    I'd argue that 3DS piracy would have continued even if Nintendo opened up for homebrew. There's money to be made off of it - if there weren't, the initial exploit with a special cartridge wouldn't have been developed. On a sidenote, do companies in general want to allow home brew on game consoles? Especially if they're selling them at a loss or at break-even, since they're not going to make money if people buy the consoles just for homebrew purposes.
    - gcb0 10y ago
      you miss the point that the pirating devices only come to existence because of the homebrew hackers.
      - delroth 10y ago
        How did the homebrew hackers help in the creation of the Gateway 3DS?
        794CD01 10y ago
        They provide camoflauge. If homebrew did not exist, such products could be uncontroversially classified as piracy tools, allowing Nintendo to aggressively remove them from the market. Instead they are in a bittorrent-like situation where even though the vast majority of the use is for copyright infringing activity, there is a loud minority that use it for something legal, and all the pirates pretend to be in that minority when accused of breaking the law. This culture of "homebrew" truly blossomed during the DS era with a huge number of commercially produced rewriteable cartridges, and 3DS piracy is largely a continuation of that.
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      > On a sidenote, do companies in general want to allow home brew on game consoles? Especially if they're selling them at a loss or at break-even, since they're not going to make money if people buy the consoles just for homebrew purposes. The PS3 had this issue when the US Air Force built a super computer out of them a while back[1], since you could run Linux on the original PS3 without a jailbreak. They latter pushed an update that disable this feature in response. [1]: http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercompute...

BoorishBears 10y ago

To me it seems especially late since the platform has been broken wide open. The "jailbreaks" now have access to both processors used to boot the system and games, so they can run code before the system loads and intercept writes to their memory locations. They can block exploits in new firmware versions (and have), but the system has sold so many units there doesn't seem to be a realistic chance of "breakable" systems running out for those interested.

striking 10y ago
Especially considering the hacks allow you to have more than one 3DS firmware installed at a time, allowing you to do things that require a clean slate while still being hacked. As long as you don't install some theoretical update that blocked all the exploits directly onto your real NAND, or as long as you don't buy a fresh 3DS with this update baked in already... you're honestly all set.
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  Also, $200 for a new 3DS is still less than what a couple of games would have cost if you bought them retail.