Nintendo Wii hack opens door to homebrew games

RE: Sweet

A decent method for playing media files from a network share, SD storage or USB connected mass storage device would be Job #1.

And some online games.

Nintendo, where in the heck are the on-line games?

Oops, personal source of Wii annoyance revealed. Move along, nothing to see here.

"Jeux sans frontiéres"

Sorry to be such a pedant...

I'll get it, I'll get it...

Gamecude

Ha ha, I didn't spot that one!

Happy ?

Shouldnt Nintendo be happy that people can actually

use the hardware for their own games ?

I mean .. anything that could boost the sales of hardware

should be well seen in my book ..

In fact .. why not let people make games and develop

games ? Sell em to Nintendo if they think it's good enough for

distribution .. give the guys credit and royalties ..

In fact : when is the first " open " platform going to appear ?

Would be fun for the consumer and game players to be able to use any game they want on their hardware..

RE: Nintendo will not be happy

Too right. As I recall from my NES/SNES days Nintendo are very tight about who they let develop for their hardware and under what conditions -- one of the reasons they always had very average/sub-par 3rd party dev shop support.

They won't be happy about this at all. Partially their own fault though: console makers should ALWAYS implement sufficient cryptography.

Good or bad?

I'm not sure if this is good or bad. If Nintendo makes a profit from the hardware it would certainly push hardware sells, but since they can't keep up with current demand any growth in demand would be a bad thing wouldn't it?

re : Open platform

Richard Herbert asks : when is the first " open " platform going to appear ?

I've got one. It's called a computer.

The Wii has been pirated a long time ago

To respond to Highlander's comment:

The Wii has been hacked for pirated games a long time ago. Modchips for the Wii were released nearly two months after the Wii was in the market. People have been copying Wii games for close to a year now. This new accomplishment only regards running homebrew software with full access to Wii hardware (something that current modchips cannot achieve), and hopefully open the door for a Linux distribution for the Wii.

@Nintendo will not be happy

> This is one of the things that has held back the

> PSP software sales. Homebrew, aka copying games.

Nonsense - the Nintendo DS has been hacked wide open for ages. £35 will buy you an R4DS cartridge and along with a microSD memory card you can play any DS ROM image easily found for download from the internet. This piracy situation hasn't in any way hampered DS game sales which far eclipse those of the PSP (that's not to say it hasn't lost Nintendo and the developers money however, because it has).

Sluggish sales of PSP games has nothing to do with game copying which - unlike Nintendo - Sony has attempted to thwart with numerous security-related firmware releases (the DS isn't firmware upgradeable so once the stable door was open it couldn't be closed).

No, the PSP suffers from poor game sales because the PSP games are generally poor and a lot less "fun" than those available for the DS. Given a choice, most people would choose the DS even though the PSP is technically the more advanced product. The DS, as with the Wii, is more innovative than the competition and this trumps technology with the consumers.

BTW... I've owned both products and am a fanboy of neither.

Homebrew=I dont just download

I may be one of the few, but just because I can play Homebrew games on my PSP doesnt mean that I then dont go out and buy them. If something is good and worth buying,then I go out and get it. Better one download, a 'try out' then purchasing, rather than just buying it blindly.

Also my coding skills are being resserected thanks to homebrew, surely I'm allowed to code on hardware i own.

nunchuck!

Highlander:

"If that becomes widespread (as it did in the early days of PSP)"

The early days? PSP has been so hacked I can flash the firmware with the pandora's battery now.

Anyway, I really need to play homebrews' and backups on my Wii; I destroy cd's all the time with my mad Wii nunchuck skillz. :\

Actually

that should be "frontières", with a grave accent.

Nintendo and security

Well, imo, Nintendo has never been a strong supporter of security. Take the DS for instance. I have to leave my wireless router running with only WEP security because the DS doesn't do WPA. And apparently, unlike the PSP, it cannot be upgraded to do so.

Generally, tho, this doesn't matter much as most modern routers allow you to configure access by MAC address instead of using WEP and WPA, but then it is a pain because you have to wait until no one is using the router before you can enter the MAC address and reboot the router to let the change take place. And oh, MAC addresses can be spoofed too.

Um....

*quote* This is one of the things that has held back the PSP software sales. Homebrew, aka copying games.*quote*

You have it bass ackwards, you can already run pirated games BEFORE this happened. In fact thats all you could do. This opens up the possibility of doing interesting things with the hardware. And to comment on the psp situation, I will NEVER buy a psp because you have to mod the firmware to make it remotely usable. I prefer the GP2X [ http://www.gp2x.com/ ] as a gaming platform because its open from the ground up. Want to play movies. Ok. Want to write software for it. Sure. Want to do something not envisioned by the devs? No freakin problem. DRM is for those that prefer to be sheep. Don't be sheeple.

@Nintendo and security

> Generally, tho, this doesn't matter much as

> most modern routers allow you to configure

> access by MAC address instead of using WEP

> and WPA

then

> And oh, MAC addresses can be spoofed too.

Woah!

MAC filters as a valid security measure is one of the biggest myths going in the world of WiFi. MAC filters are utterly worthless. Your first statement which suggests that MAC filters are a suitable alternative to WPA and even WEP is so wrong it's breath-taking in it's stupidity! However your last statement confirms you know this to be the case anyway, so I'm not really sure why you suggested filters were a good thing to be honest.

Don't use MAC filters, use proper security.

Here endeth the sermon.

One option for running a Nintendo DS is to buy a USB WiFi stick configured for WEP... plug this into a PC whenever you want to play the DS and disconnect it when finished. At all other times run your home WiFi network with WPA security. Not ideal but better than relying on WiFi myths. Yes it's a pain that the DS doesn't support WPA and updateable firmware, perhaps the lack of WPA is due to a horsepower issue as the hardware simply isn't up to it.

RE: When is the first "open" platform going to appear?

You mean Microsoft XNA Game Studio, a completely free package with which you can create games that run on both PC and Xbox 360.

Oh look, it's a marketplace where MS aren't the bad guys.

@ominous cow herd

I'll see your pedant and raise you an obvious: your accent is around the wrong way, making the E grave (like the "a" in "rabies") rather than sharp (like the "e" in pedant).

(an ex-francophone)

We don't get fooled again .......

"After all, the Dreamcast was killed by piracy and it could happen again."

Not if SMARTer Pirates are in Control of Power Switching. Control the Rock Processing Switch and you are Backing AI WinWinner.

There is of course always the Ultimate Adult Game for Nintendo to Virtualise with InterActivity ...... and Binary FeedBack. Seventh Heavens In Deed, indeed, for Base into all Global Communications HQ

A Quick Flash Lesson for A Darling Gordon Brown, duly recorded as Posted.

Hacker Channel

How long before we have to disable the network access because someone has developed a means of hacking your PC whilst you play tennis?

These things are inside your firewall. The enemy within!

PANIC! Run to the pills!

@ Media Streaming

Take a look at TVersity... easy download on your pc, works great streaming videos, music, and photos to the wii browser doing any transcoding to flash video format "on-the-fly" :)

Re: "Nintendo won't be happy"

Of course they won't, however, it's been possible to play backup Wii DVD games for ages using WiiKey and other such modchips.

All this means is that homebrew code can now be run. It hasn't contributed to any kind of piracy problem, as the Wii is already completely hack wrt. playing Wii and GC backups, using a modchip.

So it is cool after all :)

More Homebrew

like mark said, Microsoft has had XNA for the 360 out for almost 2 years now. Nintendo is following suit with WiiWare which looks like it could be the same with the exception that devs will be able to make money "off the bat", where MS is workign toards that at the mo.

When WiiWare will surface is another matter.