Hacking Will there ever be a homebrew scene on the 3DS platform?

[SLiV3R]

Recently my 3DS has collecting dust. I've been playing around with my DSi XL & GBA SP instead. Those of you who were active during that time know that both of them had an vibrant and rich homebrew scene! (Where did pocketheaven disappear?)

The 3DS is over 3 years old and more than half of its lifetime has passed and there is still no homebrew. Smealum has done a lot of nice work and Gateway will perhaps do progress someday. But nothing exist to the public yet. There is nothing close to a scene on the 3DS so far.

Im still very pleased of the 3DS mostly because the e-shop! (A couple of Nintendo games has been great as well like Zelda ALBW & SM3DW)

Do you think a homebrew scene will emerge on the second half of 3DS lifetime?

 

[Snailface]

There has been a little homebrew scene in the last few months but it's been held back by incomplete libraries and hardware/software requirements like having a 4.5 3ds and a gateway handy.

Maybe SSSpwn will revitalize things by opening up things to everyone who owns a 3ds. We're waiting on smea. (he arrived in California today).

 

[CFallenleaf]

Um.... are you not paying attention? We have a gameboy emulator. We have a way to set our play coins. People are working on more as we speak. Its happening already. We are now in the infancy of 3ds homebrew. Wait a year maybe less and be patient. The ds and gba scenes cant be compared to the 3ds. The security features of the 3ds alone are, what, 10 times more advanced than the ds.

I dont see nintendo releasing another handheld for at least another 7 years. Seeing as how thats pretty much now the average console life

 

[loco365]

Um.... are you not paying attention? We have a gameboy emulator. We have a way to set our play coins. People are working on more as we speak. Its happening already. We are now in the infancy of 3ds homebrew. Wait a year maybe less and be patient. The ds and gba scenes cant be compared to the 3ds. The security features of the 3ds alone are, what, 10 times more advanced than the ds.

I dont see nintendo releasing another handheld for at least another 7 years. Seeing as how thats pretty much now the average console life

And half of the homebrew (Like the play coin setter, which I think is actually a part of the 3DS debugger software) require a Gateway, as they're in .3DS format, leaving everyone (Like me) that can't afford a Gateway in the dust.

I honestly think there will be, someday, however, it won't be soon. There has to be a semi-reliable way for people to be able to exploit the system with as little as possible (Basically, removing the dependency for DS flashcards, as well as removing firmware limitations), and at that point, it'll start to grow.

 

[CFallenleaf]

That is true but at least its starting. The more work they do the more they will understand the 3ds and then they can hack it more consciously to allow for homebrew without gateway.

 

[loco365]

That is true but at least its starting. The more work they do the more they will understand the 3ds and then they can hack it more consciously to allow for homebrew without gateway.

Yeah. One other thing to mention is that people have to stop being so closeted about their work and stop making it a war of egos (And when I say this, I'm paraphrasing it from someone else whom I had almost a similar conversation with). Start releasing things for the community to start working with. If more people get into collaborations with 3DS hacking and reverse-engineering, things will come about faster.

 

[FAST6191]

If it has custom code on it then someone will probably make some homebrew for it.

Will it be like the GBA and DS? I very much doubt it, Android and IOS have pretty much seen to that (indeed they kind of killed off the DS and PSP at the end there) and the 3ds does not otherwise have much going for it.

 

[TheCruel]

The Homebrew scene will blow up once GPU is reverse engineered more fully and kinks are worked out of the NCCH container publicly (like romfs). By end of this year I imagine there will be some legit homebrew.

 

[alepman89]

Most of the talented devs left this whole scene and went to more legal and profitable place (Appstore/Playstore/indies.......)
it's not PSP/DS era where emulators or games like cave story distributed for free,when they can charge 3.99$ or ad revenue now.
one of the reasons i got the 3DS is to watch 3D movies (when 3d was a thing)hopefully someday .

 

[bartimeaus91]

It depends on what you think of the homebrew scene as.

IF you think of the homebrew scene as running custom built games and apps across the entire 3DS platform, there are some very promising work that is SUPPOSEDLY being done by smealum. Note that there hasn't been any update or actual release of anything by smealum yet. He's a human being and his entire universe does not revolve around the 3DS so he's still working on it. OR... he might simply have given up. Who knows?

HOWEVER, if you think of the homebrew scene as something whereby anyone and do anything on the 3DS without artificially imposed limitations. It WON'T be coming from smealum. NOPE NOPE NOPE. Not to mention at this point of time it is 100% limited to the 4.x firmware. It MAY (but it is a long shot) come from gateway but that'll still require you to own a 4.x 3ds and a GW card. Right now GW has done to most relating to us end users accessing homebrew related stuff.

 

[Silentsurvivor]

I dont see nintendo releasing another handheld for at least another 7 years. Seeing as how thats pretty much now the average console life

Oh hell no. We'll have a new portable announced around 2016 for sure. Most likely 2017 or early 2018 release. Nintendo has always followed a life cycle of around 6 years on their consoles and portables. Wii and DS were 6 years. Some of their systems were even less than that.

Oh and by life cycle I actually mean the time it takes for them to release the next device. Even after the 3DS was release the DS was still getting a few games for example so it's life cycle was actually a bit over 6 years. Same for the Wii in relation to the Wii U.

 

[CFallenleaf]

Maybe. But i kinda doubt it just because the 3ds and wii u both did so crappy in the begining. They are gonna want to take the time to make sure they are releasing something up to par. I mean i love my 3ds but it really isnt all that impressive. And the wii u.... the only real thing to happen there was 1080p ang a giant gba as a controller.(yes i know its still kinda cool and it isnt really a giant gba but it might as well be)

 

[misterb98]

Oh hell no. We'll have a new portable announced around 2016 for sure. Most likely 2017 or early 2018 release. Nintendo has always followed a life cycle of around 6 years on their consoles and portables. Wii and DS were 6 years. Some of their systems were even less than that.

Oh and by life cycle I actually mean the time it takes for them to release the next device. Even after the 3DS was release the DS was still getting a few games for example so it's life cycle was actually a bit over 6 years. Same for the Wii in relation to the Wii U.

Then there better be a Region Free hack for the 4ds by 2019. Imports forever!

 

[HBK]

Then there better be a Region Free hack for the 4ds by 2019. Imports forever!

Region Locks need to die. Whoever thought it was cool to have region locked stuff? It was bad enough with the stupid DRM on DVDs where you couldn't watch them on players from different regions (those disks that people used to buy/rent to watch movies, in case you don't remember).

Thankfully, torrents and streaming services exist.

 

[endoverend]

Imma be honest. I hate Gateway. It's totally closed source, expensive, and needs a 4.5 3ds. That last part isn't their fault, but still, I don't want to have to spend 200$ to be able to participate in a homebrew scene that may or may not ever start to exist. This is why i think the Gateway team should make it a priority to work on porting to later firmware. Smea did it (although he doesn't have much to say about it). I mean, to most people, an exploit on wayyy lower firmware (which blocks access to eShop and most new games) isn't worth it. Gateway is far from perfect, and until devs start to discover exploits on later firmwares (as I said, thank you Smea for setting the stage), there is no homebrew scene. The DS and the Wii were easy to hack and required no hardware modifications. If nothing like that ever shows up on the 3ds, a homebrew scene will never exist.

Whew. Now I can die getting that off my chest.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Probably not, because of certain pro-DMCA white knights.

 

[endoverend]

Probably not, because of certain pro-DMCA white knights.

DMCA technically means nothing to homebrew devs, since its goal is to stop piracy. So theoretically there could be pro-DMCA devs developing homebrew.

 

[bartimeaus91]

Probably not, because of certain pro-DMCA white knights.

DMCA technically means nothing to homebrew devs, since its goal is to stop piracy. So theoretically there could be pro-DMCA devs developing homebrew.

What subtledemise meant is accurate and he is referring to several specific homebrew devs. It is well know that certain devs don't release homebrew related stuff because those stuff in question can also be used for piracy. In a sense it's like banning the use of kitchen knifes for cooking because they can hurt people. The harsh reality is that instead of aiming for an open system, they are trying to lock it down so that only homebrew can happen and this seems to be harder as currently running homebrew means you would be able to pirate too.

In a way, these "white knights" seem to think they know what's best. So yeah, long live gateway because these "white knights" are enablers too.

 

[Skelletonike]

Personally, I don't really care about homebrew. Only thing I would like would be a region-free hack. Nothing for piracy of course (I detest piracy and been buying all the games I like nowadays), but I would like to play some of the japanese Level 5 games since they have furigana. z.z

 

[Abcdfv]

Personally, I don't really care about homebrew. Only thing I would like would be a region-free hack. Nothing for piracy of course (I detest piracy and been buying all the games I like nowadays), but I would like to play some of the japanese Level 5 games since they have furigana. z.z

Gateway EMunand classic mode. You dont need to buy a GW cart to use it.