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Nintendo's Homebrew-Blocking Update Hacked
ElementC writes "Team Twiizers, the group behind almost all of the Wii Homebrew scene, has released an update to the Homebrew Channel (and installer) that allows for installation on a Wii with the most recent update installed. While the team still recommends against installing the Nintendo update, those who accidentally updated or purchase games that require the update are no longer left out to dry. This update to the Homebrew Channel also adds SDHC support, a feature Nintendo has not implemented in vanilla Wiis. The community has also created an app that updates just the Wii Shop Channel — allowing users to purchase Wiiware and Virtual Console games without losing their homebrew. It took the team only two days to get the fix out."
Like when Nintendo doesn't condone it, but leave little bits of stuff "open" for someone to find and break to keep a scene healthy?
Task Mangler
Insert obligatory "the more you tighten your grip....etc.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Both Wii homebrew users are reported to be delighted.
The biggest news out of the whole thing for me is that they have added SDHC support through a _channel_ in the Wii dashboard. People have been speculating why the Wii would not support SDHC and if it was some hardware limitation...well, it seems like it isn't. Which really makes me wonder why Nintendo has not added it, yet...in this day and age it's almost getting hard to find a non-SDHC card...
Seriously...WTF. This isn't the first time some 3rd party tool squeezes more functionality out of hardware. But this should really be a no-brainer to implement for the big N.
I feel sorry for Nintendo on this one.
The console is about as cheap as they get, and Nintendo put an incredible amount of research and effort into making the best games in the world. When do you folk feel a bit ethically obliged to let the company just make some money out of the good work they've done.
Secondly, the because its there argument. I cracked games in the past, way back in the days of C-64, All those Block executes on track 5 sector 5 etc. But I didn't distribute - I cracked it cause it was fun to do and for my own benefit - I didn't want to get in trouble, or ruin those software companies.
Thirdly Nintendo may not have deliberately broken the previous hacks anyway. All they did was release a new binary and the compiled code moved a bit in memory. I think a little too much credit may be being given here.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Check this article to find out why this is not really surprising.
Yup, that is indeed Nintendo featuring on TheDailyWTF.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
DRM does not work.
Mathematically speaking.
Come on, I think I will make my children write a thousand times on a blackboard "DRM does not work", so at least _they_ won't bother trying when they grow up.
Even when they secure the path all the way from the UV-ray disc to each dot in the LCD/plasma/OLED display in 2038, all one needs to get the color of each pixel with greater than 99.999% accuracy is half a dozen US$ 100 cheap cameras, some tripods and a calibrating movie... [and a 64-bit timestamp :-)]
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
why support these companies that support DRM?? when MS or walmart use DRM there's a /. nerd outcry, but when apple or Nintendo do it it's ok because we can crack it?? news flash retards, ALL drm is crackable because it's a broken strategy
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Anything that opens up the Wii platform is good news, so a hearty cheer from me.
If Nintendo created a proper home-brew platform, making it easier and cheaper to make small games and apps, the Wii could become a killer home entertainment platform (especially if they add DVD and local storage support). Something along the lines of the iPhone/Android apps store, where you can sell cheap games and they take a small cut. Currently the selection on WiiWare is pretty limited unless you want old NES games.
If they did that, I'd become a Wii developer overnight.
Paul Leader
These guys are nothing short of awesome :). Only two days after the update. For those of us who couldn't possibly afford a Nintendo dev kit (or get one if we could since we're not publishers) this is the only way we're able to write games on an actual Wii.
Thanks Team TWiizers!
Even when they secure the path all the way from the UV-ray disc to each dot in the LCD/plasma/OLED display in 2038, all one needs to get the color of each pixel with greater than 99.999% accuracy is half a dozen US$ 100 cheap cameras
True, analog reconversion defeats digital restrictions management on non-interactive works. But Nintendo publishes video games, which are interactive works.
(people here at work thought I was having a seizure...)
That is the best definition of door locks' effectiveness I ever read.
But, anyway, the important thing is: once one thief (eventual or lock-picking) enters your home, he takes your TV and stereo; once one copyright infringer copies your movie, the whole internet has access to it via BT. :-)
And answering KasperMeerts above:
And who will be permitted to own a TV and a camera at the same time you think?
even in a police state the would have difficulty tracking all cameras and/or impeding clubs/families to own a digital tv and a camera. Notice that I told about a rig that does not involve breaking up the big-screen TV. Once one is willing to open his/her TV up, it's just a matter of substituting the physical screen for some millions of data entry points and recording away. But with nice calibration, even perfect/near-perfect digital copies via the analog hole are possible.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
They are ethically obliged to do as much as possible to ensure you can't run illegal, unlicensed software on it.
Illegal under what law, and unlicensed under what exclusive right? Please name a few "illegal, unlicensed" titles you're looking at, so that other people following this discussion can understand what you are talking about.
Just from a glance at the wiki, some of the games being made available are clones of Nintendo's own games!
So bleeping what? Game play is not copyrightable. In fact, Nintendo's own Balloon Fight, available in the North American versions of Animal Crossing (for GameCube) and Wii Shop Channel, is a clone of Midway's Joust.
People don't buy $250 systems just to play homebrew.
No, but they do buy $330 systems just to play homebrew. Heck, if you define "homebrew" to mean "software released without a negotiated licensing agreement between the developer and the computer's manufacturer", people buy $300 to $2,000 devices for homebrew, called "personal computers".
But why doesn't Nintendo just license the ScummVM and drop it as a small $ purchase on their online store?
That way anyone who has an old scumm game can play it for free (by copying it to the SD card), and anyone else
can buy a copy via the store. Seems like win/win for everyone. I know there are hacks to enable mplayer, and DVD playback
and those are separate issues, probably more due to licensing the underlying patents for various compression technologies
than anything.
Blah, blah, blah I am only doing it for the poor kids with cancer....
Sorry it is such a bullshit excuse and 99.9% of those people who are creating/using this hack to run pirated games could give a shit otherwise.
No offense but you and the rest of the clones around here have your head shoved up your ass a little, but by all means turn a blind eye to what is really going on. It is silly because the people releasing these cracks are all majority involved in Warez groups or otherwise, but hey whatever you do don't read that 'release.txt' full of the Warez groups name and crack team that came with the hack to run your open source hardware.
To pay for games or download for free from the internet? hmmmm doesn't take a monkey to figure out that choice
That's the problem with Nintendo allowing homebrew or even looking the other way while it's going on. They have no control over the code so for them to allow it to run on their console is leaving them open to lawsuits.
Are you claiming Midway would be able to successfully sue Nintendo for allowing confusingly named games on its console? If so, why hasn't anybody been able to sue Apple for the same thing on its Macintosh computers?
Another example would be a homebrew coder writing totally his own code and creating some ultra-violent game that adults might find hilarious and fun but that same game, written outside the boundaries of the parental controls might be picked up by some young kid whose clueless parent might then flip over it and sue Nintendo because their parental controls failed.
Would they likewise sue Microsoft because Windows Vista's parental controls failed?
Maybe more governments and businesses are going for open source and free software, but I am not sure you could say a majority are. Ten years ago, it was almost 0% except for common things such as Apache and the like. It is up from 0%, but I doubt it is over 50% or even 25%, however I don't know for sure. Would be nice to see the actual numbers though.
I do admit there have been changes to sway things so open source / free software is in a better position, but I think the freedoms to have such things are still at risk. There are also still software and media companies pushing and lobbying for proprietary software and DRM, so there is still a reasonable possibility for them to take over.