Nintendo Blocks Homebrew Installation

ElementC writes "Sometime yesterday Nintendo uploaded the latest Wii system update. This update quietly patches a few bugs that allowed the installation of both homebrew and warez apps. Currently installed apps such as the Homebrew Channel and the video DVD library, DVDX, are reportedly not affected. Those not installing this update are blocked out of the Wii Shop channel and in the future may be blocked out of certain games. Team Twiizers cracked the last update within about eight hours. They're already on the case. Readers familiar with the architecture of the Wii will find the list of currently discovered changes interesting."

Comments

Homebrew Wii-ns again

[Drakkenmensch]

If there's anything we have learned from the homebrews on the PSP, it's that people involved in firmware cracking are a resourceful bunch, always a step ahead of the big companies running around with a trowel and mortar to plug the leaks in the dam. Expect your favorite Wii homebrew to be restored to business as usual within a day or two.

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[Sockatume]

As a remorseless pedant I feel obliged to observe that by outsmarting the manufacturer after the new firmware comes out, the hackers are surely one or more steps behind the big companies. When the homebrew community anticipates upcoming fixes and pre-emptively beats them, then I'll concede that they are indeed one step ahead.

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[IndustrialComplex]

Ahh but what if they had anticipated the fix, pre-emptively beat them, and then feigned ignorance for a few days to make the companies think that they had outsmarted the hackers.

Only to find out that they themselves were victims of a double-cross, but the real joke is that it wasn't even a cross since the hackers were employees that were posing as hackers to lull the homebrew community into installing their code. The result is that the homebrew community has been slowly installing pieces of a much more vast program conceived in the secret vaults underneat the Washington Monument. The true nature of these fixes won't be known until the third high tide past the winter solstice when the tidal forces on the wii controllers motion sensors will signal the code to execute.

There is more, but you will

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[Aphoxema]

You know too much.

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[idontgno]

There is more, but you will

...press "Submit" prematurely, leaving the entire /crowd in the agony of suspense?

Well played, well played.

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[Kozz]

Are you by chance Sicilian?

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[Shade of Pyrrhus]

A Sicilian? On Slashdot? Inconceivable!

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[KillerBob]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[Sockatume]

Oh, yes, that's exactly what I would hope they would do. A hacking team that had Sony's PSP fixes continuosly outfoxed ahead of time would completely change the game and perhaps encourage manufacturers to let us tinker.

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[marcansoft]

When the homebrew community anticipates upcoming fixes and pre-emptively beats them, then I'll concede that they are indeed one step ahead.

That's pretty much what happened. We've been sitting on more exploits for ages, and it took us two hours to make one work after the update. Expect public release in, oh, a day or so.

We're several steps ahead. Their code is too buggy.

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[TubeSteak]

You know too much.

No, he just read the script to National Treasure 3: The Unix Bible

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[liquidsin]

from the way his post ends, i'd say knew too much...

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[hvm2hvm]

Maybe he just couldn't write more of that. That happens to me when I have an idea and want to post about it but while writing it I start to see that it was pretty dumb so I submit whatever it's in there to get it off my head.
This post starts to feel like that too. Or maybe it's just

Re:Homebrew Wii-ns again

[Tatsh]

There is a LOT of attention and appreciation for these hackers. I think these hackers love that and that they continue to be successful at cracking open basically a 'virtual safe'. They are cracking things that the companies who make the products want none of. If a company is open to user modifications, that hardly qualifies as 'cracking', as a company like that would probably release specifications, etc.

For the individual hacker, it is definitely a feeling of 'I have beat them at their own game'. And for both the hacker and the community, it is that and a statement like 'We will continue cracking until you give us what we want'. What people want is subjective. Some strictly would like to see homebrew allowed legally on all consoles. Some would like to be able to use backups as well as legitimate copies of their games. Regardless, a very high number of the users of homebrew, modchips, and other modifications to consoles enjoy being able to play downloaded games without having to pay for them.

These products are definitely 'defective by design'. The whole scheme of video game selling has always been to screw over a consumer. Today you cannot return a game if you legitimately dislike it after playing (ridiculous considering some are $50+). You also legally cannot make a backup copy and use that to keep the original safe 5 year olds and optical discs? As if. And when they get ruined, does the company give you a new copy when you send in your old one? Very few do. So 90% of the time you are stuck buying a new copy if you want to stay all legal.

To the companies involved: give us at least A) homebrew ability (and free development tools and full access to the console (that means you, Sony) for at the least non-commercial use), and B) backup ability (that includes PC games!).

Can't win, just go with it

[hansamurai]

8 hours is significant because I believe for that update, Nintendo had something like a three or four month development, testing, release schedule. This is of course not out of the norm for an update that will affect millions of people, but I can't imagine how much money was put into "fixing" the homebrew problem only for it to be cracked again in hours.

Re:Can't win, just go with it

[tepples]

8 hours is significant because I believe for that update, Nintendo had something like a three or four month development, testing, release schedule.

It was actually a half year cycle. Nintendo released IOS37, and it got a few months of production testing. Then Nintendo released IOS30 and IOS31 with the signing bug fix backported from IOS37, and it also got a few months of production testing. Now we're seeing the signing bug fix in every IOS major version.

Re:Can't win, just go with it

[v1]

The difference is they have a pocketful of known exploits they can use. They only implement one. Months later it's patched out. Then they can just get out their list and see which one they're going to use next. Maybe the update eliminated one of the options, maybe it added a few more that they will discover and add to their list in the next few months. That's the difference - preparedness, turn-around time. They're doing their R&D while they already have a working exploit in place. Then when that one stops working, they've got one waiting in the wing to be polished and rolled out.

That's the difference between when the next salvo gets fired. Own the box, wait 4 months, patch. Take another 8 days, owned again. Another 4 month wait for the next patch maybe? You can't possibly say the hackers aren't ahead of the curve here.

Re:Can't win, just go with it

[lysergic.acid]

what on earth are you talking about? so some locksmith who spend 2 years to design a lock that a thief cracks in 2 minutes means that the thief spent 2 years and 8 hours to crack the lock? i'm sorry, but your logic is severely wanting.

crackers don't take credit for the new features that hardware vendors add to firmware updates (if there are any), they're merely credited for bypassing the security/DRM/defective-by-design (pick your favorite) mechanisms the vendor added to prevent users from running homebrew. in the case of PSP, most firmware updates don't add any real value to the PSP. they're merely released to break the forward-compatibility of old/cracked firmwares so that users would have to update to OFW to play newly released games. that's why many people simply continue to run CFW based off of an older firmware version.

if vendors didn't intentionally cripple their devices in firmware then hackers wouldn't have to crack the firmware to enable homebrew development on these platforms. both the vendor and the homebrew developers' time and resources could be better spent on improving the platform rather than participating in this fruitless arms race. and often it's homebrew developers that add more value to a system through CFW than the official firmware updates that just cripple the system.

for instance, the M33 CFW for the PSP allowed early adopters who purchased the PSP-1000 (which Sony has apparently turned their backs on) to actually use VoIP (Furikup) on their PSP--a feature that the Sony update only gave to the PSP-2000. and Furikup actually has more robust features than the Skype add-on of Sony's OFW.

what's silly is someone who obviously has no clue about how homebrew works, or what it is, commenting about homebrew development and the efforts of the hackers who make it possible.

Any actual changes to the Wii Shop Channel?

[glindsey]

Did the update actually do anything to the Wii Shop Channel (other than making it inaccessible without the update)? Or was that simply a ruse to get everybody to apply an update that is really designed for a totally different purpose?

Re:Any actual changes to the Wii Shop Channel?

[Goose42]

It renamed Wii Points to Nintendo Points, and added clearer warnings about what controllers you have to own in order to play a game before you purchase the game.

Re:Any actual changes to the Wii Shop Channel?

[Kjella]

Did the update actually do anything to the Wii Shop Channel (other than making it inaccessible without the update)? Or was that simply a ruse to get everybody to apply an update that is really designed for a totally different purpose?

Many systems that work with an online service have a policy that you must have the latest version and if you don't it'll be upgraded first, even those where there's no such ulterior motive to be found. I think it's mostly a case of ease of testing and support, rather than test a huge range of versions all they need to know is that build 23425 of the client works with build 5435 of the server. If someone calls support and have a problem with the service, everything is where you'd expect things to be in the latest version. Of course to them it's not a downside that things like homebrew are blocked either, but I don't think it's the main reason.

Remember when...

[SirCowMan]

I saw the update message on the Wii this morning, lame. Unauthorized software? Remember the time when software updates added functionality and/or fixed bugs? Rather than trying to limit your use of your own hardware (or is it leased now?) and protect the suppliers own revenue streams. While I haven't (yet) played around with the homebrew channel, and probably won't for a couple months (newborn due shortly!), I'm skipping this 'update' out of disgust.

Re:Remember when...

[moderatorrater]

if you want to think about it in terms of limiting the use of the hardware, then they're not doing anything of the sort. The only thing you get out of these fixes are online play and the ability to use their online store, both of which are value added services which require effort on the part of Nintendo to run and maintain. You're welcome to do whatever you want with the hardware, but if you don't use their firmware, you don't get to use their other services. In this case, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

We should be complaining about the other locked down hardware that we get, like cell phones, where we're paying for the service and the hardware and get to use neither like we'd like. The Wii could be used almost to its fullest potential without installing a single update, but you can't say that about the iphone.

Re:Remember when...

[Duradin]

I don't see it as limiting the use of your own hardware.

It's limiting the use of your modified hardware with Nintendo's servers and software. Just because you have the ability to take hardware out of spec does not mean the original manufacturer *has* to continue to interact with your modded hardware.

If the homebrew and various activities of questionable legality offer more value to you than Nintendo's services why even bother with Nintendo updates? Unless you want to eat your cake and have it too by expecting Nintendo to do the extra work necessary to make sure their services play nicely with your out of spec hardware and, more importantly, that your out of spec hardware plays nicely with their services.

Now if the Wii, or any console, was touted as a general purpose computer, restricting its use would be dirty pool. Though when you purchase a console, you know you are buying a device made for a specific purpose. Perhaps you can change it to do other things, but it is rather silly and selfish to expect the manufacturer to welcome this now foreign hardware with open arms.

For some extra disclosure, I run a cycloDS setup on my DS Lite. I got tired of having GBA carts protrude from the case. Not having to carry all the carts along (using roms made from my own carts only) is a big bonus. Now if there came a along a patch that would break compatibility with the cycloDS, I wouldn't install it, unless whatever the patch was for was worth giving up the flash carts OR purchasing a new DS to run the new firmware and whatever game or feature that needed the patch. I am totally aware of the fact that while the DS has the capability to be more of a general purpose platform that is not the way Nintendo intended it to be used and that in using such a way that it is not Nintendo's responsibility to keep their goods compatible with my modified system.

Homebrew channel - worth it?

[Mr_Silver]

Serious question, is it really worth installing the Homebrew channel if you don't plan to do any development and don't have any intention of buying a classic controller?

I took a look at what was offered about 2 months ago and nothing that was developed really made me want to rush out and install the channel. Don't get me wrong, people are doing great things, but I just ended up saying "meh" and went about playing Super Mario Galaxy.

If I want emulators I can get that on the PSP now and the control system is better suited for the task. If I want DVD playback, then I already have a great Philips box which does DivX too.

So ... is there something absolutely fantastic which I'm missing out on?

Re:Homebrew channel - worth it?

[krakelohm]

Damn, who pissed in your Cheerios?

Re:Homebrew channel - worth it?

[Theoboley]

That was me. I did it.

Re:Homebrew channel - worth it?

[FictionPimp]

Is format shifting a form of piracy? I bought a whole ton of nintendo and super nintendo games and I still own them. If I could rip the roms from them what is wrong with using the homebrew to play those roms via an emulator?

Re:Homebrew channel - worth it?

[Carnildo]

Is format shifting a form of piracy? I bought a whole ton of nintendo and super nintendo games and I still own them. If I could rip the roms from them what is wrong with using the homebrew to play those roms via an emulator?

To the best of my knowlege, there is nothing wrong, legally or morally, with format-shifting games you already own. In order to be strictly legal, you need to do the ROM-dumping yourself rather than downloading ROM images someone else has already dumped. Running an emulator is totally legal -- this was tested in court back in the early 90s when the first console emulators came out.

Re:Account blocking?

[harrkev]

Honesty, why bother? I have not seen any Wii homebrew stuff compelling enough to risk bricking my Wii. I am not an expert on this, but here is my take: you can add the following applications:

* Pirated stuff (WiiWare, virtual console, Wii game copies). I am not into piracy at all. I believe in paying for the stuff that I use. Not interested

* Mame. This is interesting. Still "borderline" piracy, but I can at least understand this. Still, I am not that much into old games when there are so many good new ones out.

* DVD Player. Wow, I can avoid spending $30 on a dedicated DVD player, AND get more wear and tear on the DVD drive motor. Plus, with the Wii fan running, dust accumulation on the heat sinks will be accelerated. The risk of bricking is just a bonus.

I have not really heard of any "must-have" homebrew games for the Wii.

Now, hacking a DS does seem cool. Some people have made some nice DS music synthesis software. Then again, I am still waiting for the DS-10 to be released. That is on my "must buy" list to sit beside my Korg Kaossilator.

Re:Account blocking?

[tepples]

DVD Player. Wow, I can avoid spending $30 on a dedicated DVD player, AND get more wear and tear on the DVD drive motor.

I think the draw of playing DVD-Video and DivX video on the Wii was supposed to be the fact that a DVD player takes shelf space (especially in Japan and other locales with overpriced real estate), and you need an extra set of five cables going into your switch box.

TV system doesn't match; rating systems

[tepples]

I live in Australia and many games (especially Nintendo and Capcom titles) take weeks, if not months longer to reach here after their US release.

I can think of two reasons:

For one thing, game consoles are typically used with large displays called "TVs". TVs in New Zealand and Australia run slower than North American TVs. A lot of games' physics are based on a time quantum based on that of the TV's vertical retrace, and developers need to retune the physics, retest all the levels to compensate for this.

Some video games include depictions of violence or sex that the community deems unsuitable for small children. The standards and practices differ from country to country, and rating boards in each country classify each game based on local standards. It takes time to remove depictions that would result in a refusal to classify a game.

Re:TV system doesn't match; rating systems

[jo_ham]

Every TV since the rise of consoles, pretty much, has been capable of running NTSC signals, or even PAL signals using a 60Hz refresh rate.

You'd be hard pressed to find a TV that had ports on it for attaching a console that couldn't flip between different systems at will based on the input signal.

The distribution rights tend to be the thing that really slows down the release of games, videos and music in a region - it's almost never a technical problem any more.

Re:TV system doesn't match; rating systems

[jo_ham]

I was talking about in Europe, Aus and any other region of the world where NTSC isn't the primary TV system.

Every single European TV I have seen that has RCA ports on it since the mid 90s or earlier has been able to function with at least PAL and NTSC signals. More modern ones can handle anything you can throw at them.

I have a wide selection of Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs and an unlocked DVD player and I've never come across a TV that I can't play those US DVDs on (and the DVD player doesn't change the disc to PAL, it outputs in NTSC when a region 1 disc is played).

Maybe US TVs are all NTSC only, but here in Europe, they are all multi format.

Re:Blocking owners?

[krakelohm]

I believe games that require an update will come with the update on the game DVD as well. Mario Galaxy was this way.

Sid Meier's Pirates!

[tepples]

So if you use the homebrew firmware on the Wii, you can raid ships on the high seas?

Exactly. If you crack your Wii for homebrew and install an NES emulator, you can play an infringing copy of the NES version of Sid Meier's Pirates! (1991). Just make sure to use Twilight Hack to install the DVD driver and the Homebrew Channel before you put on the new IOS.

When will they update Flash and Opera?

[edmicman]

When will they update their Flash player? I paid 5 bucks to have big screen streaming web p-, er, videos, and all that seems to work is YouTube. WTF?

Re:Blocking owners?

[jassa]

Interesting fact: Although the game discs force you to update, the games themselves often don't actually require the update. I don't endorse game piracy, but I did investigate the piracy scene while waiting for Smash Bros. Brawl to be released in Australia and was surprised to discover the pirated version had the update stripped out of the iso, and could still be played with no problems.

Apparently this was also true for every other game that had previously come bundled with an update.

Uhm....

[Moryath]

That's essentially what happens.

The PSP hackers (Dark Alex in particular) pretty much know every trick Sony has in their arsenal. The only unknown is which particular bit Sony is going to try in each time (what the particular decompression keys will be for example). Making a new PSP custom firmware for these guys is really pretty straightforward; they unpack the firmware, doublecheck their CFW code against the new code, doublecheck any newly-appearing functions, and release the patched version that pretty much patches the same bullcrap stuff that's just been in each official firmware release since 2.00.

It's the companies that are reacting - they "patch" for the repairs the "hackers" have made to restore proper function to their Defective-By-Design products. With this latest bit, I fully expect we're going to start to see PSP-style custom firmware installations for the Wii that begin to open the platform up more fully and allow it greater flexibility to be used to its fullest capability.

Upgrade the Internet channel flash player already

[Jabbrwokk]

I agree it's good to have everyone running the same update for service and support purposes, but this update really doesn't seem to do anything important.

Instead of wasting time developing an update to block a handful of people from hacking their Wiis, why doesn't Nintendo put their time and development cycles into upgrading the freaking Internet channel flash player already. It's over a year and a half out of date and more and more flash videos are unplayable on the Wii as websites upgrade to the newest version. At least Youtube still works (mostly).

I know I can just go use my computer, but it's fun to watch Internet videos on my couch (and streaming TV shows) instead of having everyone huddle around the computer monitor.

What brand of dumper?

[tepples]

If I could rip the roms from [my NES and Super NES Game Paks] what is wrong with using the homebrew to play those roms via an emulator?

In countries with case law analogous to Sony v. Universal and RIAA v. Diamond, nothing. But what brand of NES and Super NES cart dumper do you recommend? (The Internet doesn't count, per UMG v. MP3.com.)

Um, Nintendo ?? wtf?

[Piranhaa]

You currently need this update to access the Wii Shop Channel. from http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wii_System_Updates

Umm.. So what Nintendo is basically saying is "Well, if you don't upgrade you can keep pirating but we REFUSE to let you pay for us for anything" Whoever thought that up should be fired. By doing this update, I'm sure that they're actually losing revenue from people that will not update. Of course, only until the patch gets a workaround again.