> It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my knowledge. Some did, some got close. Most card based systems have to replace the cards every five year

> It was wild west, proper ones were never cracked to my knowledge. Some did, some got close. Most card based systems have to replace the cards every five years or so when their intel suggests groups are getting nearer cracking them. Ultimately the reason is cost. The conditional access vendors who work on those cards spend a lot lot lot of money on it because that's their entire business and they need to work for a long time or you pay out tens of millions in postage and support. Most chipset vendors shrug their shoulders after two years because it's out of support and they don't care, everyone else gets broken too. In this case Nintendo probably got some significant compensation of Nvidia that hurt them, but it was Nvidia's first real go at it and they fluffed it.