Hacking Plutoo : the first Switch system module has fallen

[Joom]

I keep trying to find a reason for me to get up off my ass and actually learn something other than Perl (or R like I was planning to), and I think Switch homebrew might be good enough of a reason for me to do that, even if it's not happening soon.

Any reason in existence is good enough for not learning Perl and R.

 

[Don Jon]

moar people complaining about the switch getting hacked
huhhhh

so what does the module mean anyways?

 

[Captain_N]

that's nice just might as well tell Nintendo what to patch.....

 

[TimX24968B]

just curious, what programming languages would you need to know to make homebrew in general, whether it be for the switch or for something like the 3ds?

Also, how hard are they to learn? I already know a good bit of java and python ( I doubt matlab counts, though, but who knows)

 

[Deleted User]

just curious, what programming languages would you need to know to make homebrew in general, whether it be for the switch or for something like the 3ds?

Also, how hard are they to learn? I already know a good bit of java and python

Based off of what I see used most often in the 3DS homebrew scene, C, C++, and/or Python.

 

[TimX24968B]

Based off of what I see used most often in the 3DS homebrew scene, C, C++, and/or Python.

If only people still taught C/C++... the last class that I had dropped it from the curriculum cause the dev environment wasn't installed on any of the computers

 

[Deleted User]

If only people still taught C/C++... the last class that I had dropped it from the curriculum cause the dev environment wasn't installed on any of the computers

The For Dummies books I've tried using in the past for learning other languages (PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and HTML5 For Dummies (even though I ended up forgetting some of it due to not using it) and Perl for Dummies) have been pretty good, so maybe C For Dummies and C++ For Dummies might be worth checking out?

 

[TimX24968B]

The For Dummies books I've tried using in the past for learning other languages (PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and HTML5 For Dummies (even though I ended up forgetting some of it due to not using it) and Perl for Dummies) have been pretty good, so maybe C For Dummies and C++ For Dummies might be worth checking out?

I will see if I have time. That is, if I still have time left once I have my nintendo switch.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

 

[Tomy Sakazaki]

Spoiler

I won't actually disagree with you that hacking has little bearing on the popularity of a system, but I will point out that you're jumping around madly. For example, the Gamecube is a full generation before the Wii. Also, you bypassed the Dreamcast which SEGA at least tried to use piracy as the scapegoat to blame for its failure (though anyone with any sense can see the real reasons it failed, number one being their utter and complete lack of any real marketing capabilities whatsoever. Not even anything like Segata Sanshiro on the Saturn, and that's not even the kind of marketing I mean... Heck, even SONY had some idiot dressed up in a bad Crash Bandicoot suit at least, though again that's not really the sort of marketing I'm talking about.)

I do think a truly objective look into how piracy affects things is needed. On the one hand, there are some lost sales, but on the other hand, the assumption that one download equals one lost sale is so fallacious it's vomit-worthy. (Some downloads are people redownloading something they already own with damaged discs, some are people redownloading a deleted download, some are people who try before they buy and then buy what they like, etc etc.) And then, as you imply here, there's the popularity factor. E.g. those who have methods of playing copies tell others about those things and then other people do actually buy them even if the first person didn't. It's very complicated, but it does seem very potentially likely that it actually does more good than harm. Of course, companies must show a serious effort to curb piracy because publishers (particularly AAA publishers who have way too much pull and are way too disconnected from the actual realities of the actual market and the actual people in said market as well as their own developers) but this does beg the question of if they aren't all going too far and for all the wrong reasons since so many do indeed assume one download is one lost sale...


This isn't really a fair comparison. Until consoles started going to CDs making any sort of copies was prohibitively difficult (and illegal clone carts weren't the booming market they became much later around I guess the DS generation as chip production was still a bit costly and difficult to get into initially.) Now, if you consider generation only and forget consoles for a second this puts the lie to the statement. On computers copying was insanely easy and copy protections there predate consoles by far with some things even going so far at times as to utilize an external dongle connecting to the computer as a protection mechanism in a fit of utter paranoia. A lot of early PC games required you to enter text from various points in the game manual or turn a multi-part rotating wheel to match different parts and enter whatever was showing through cutouts. Copy protection is definitely nothing even remotely new and far predates those systems. I think the earliest was actually in the 70s in fact...

Friendly warning, some (actually a lot of us) brazilians have the tendency to ignore that most consoles are sold at loss even years after launch, they ignore completely the "attach ratio" strategy of software sales. They think that a console manufacturer is happy about selling lots of consoles units that won't get more than 5 game sales in their lifetime because the console "is popular among pirates and non-pirates". Heck, they even ignore that developers and publishers actually wants to sell the game instead of "getting famous with the most pirated software ever".
Essentially there are lots of brazilian pirates that use the worst excuses to try to deflect judgement about their piracy habits. I'm a brazilian, I do pirate some games eventually and I have a hard time trying to argue against the "piracy actually helps console makers and developer" fallacy because those folks don't want to feel bad about hurting the game industry workers.

 

[Nazosan]

Nintendo generally sells their consoles at a profit. Not a huge profit, but a profit.

And I think it's a complete fallacy to try to judge pirates as a whole at all. There are many reasons one might pirate and while some are bad, there are actually some that are good or at least harmless (for example, the assumption is that one download equals one lost sale, but many try before they buy and then actually do buy and some can't afford to buy everything so it wasn't a lost sale if they wouldn't have bought it anyway.) There are also some serious advantages to CFWs too. For example, on the 3DS if anything happens to your system, you might be able to get Nintendo to transfer your software library, but your saves are gone. Period. With a CFW you can run a third party software that makes it possible to actually backup your saves. (Also you can edit them which is a huge no-no in Nintendo's book. Not to prevent cheating, but to prevent exploits, which is why they have to be so thoroughly encrypted and protected in the first place. I'm not huge on cheating, but in a very few games it really helps one get around some more tedious aspects that can ruin the fun.) Don't even get me started on things like virtual console injects of games that Nintendo literally can't do. (Legally speaking they must acquire a license to distribute whether via buying or willingly from the IP owner. Plus they have to even be aware something exists. For example, I couldn't resist getting a VC inject of "Faxanadu" -- a NES game I owned when I was a kid before parents did the whole parent thing -- for the sake of nostalgia and there is no way Nintendo is even aware that game exists, much less would ever bother licensing it. It's a bit of a niche game, so not really that well known and in some ways it's not really the greatest as controls can be a tad clunky and such at times, but it was rather decent for its time and of course has a huge nostalgia factor for me, so I very much like that I can actually play it on my 3DS, but there is literally no way this could happen legally.) No, piracy is much too complicated of a thing to judge as a whole no matter how you look at it.


But anyway, based on your quote you may have been referring to my point about the Dreamcast and how SEGA tried to claim the reason it failed was due to piracy. I can assure you that Brazil alone can't make or break a console and the piracy on the Dreamcast was more or less the same as any other console. (Sure it was easier than the PS2 since you could actually write boot code on the disc and it just boot without checking for ATIP data or anything -- aka no chip needed -- but it still required a bit of knowhow, a burner that wouldn't "correct" the boot data, and etc.) No, the Dreamcast died because SEGA really really sucked at marketing in almost every way (except I'll admit the consumer side of the Segata Sanshiro campaign must have been good given how people seemed to feel about that, but that's only one side and still forgetting the other...) It's not just a simple matter of getting people to buy the console or even to buy games in general. You also have to get developers to actually make it a point to not only make ports to your system, but to make them well (and hopefully to make some exclusive. People will tend to buy whatever system has the exclusives they want when they can get ports of everything else they care about.) SEGA didn't really do this. In fact, they were notoriously bad throughout much of their life (and don't even get me started on how with the Genesis/Megadrive they decided much of the world wouldn't be interested in RPGs so emphasized action games as much as possible. How many more people go back to the SNES for Chrono Trigger than, say, those who go back to the Genesis/Megadrive for, say, Sonic 2? People go back to both for both and Sonic 2 is undeniably very good for a 2D platformer, but I'd bet you good money that Chrono Trigger has more fans and more people trying to play it on as many things as they can. Each has their separate appeal and it really isn't even fair to compare them, but the point is that RPGs have merit and value and having only a rare few like Shining Force was a very bad idea.)

Piracy is definitely a convenient scapegoat, but ultimately it really doesn't make the life and death difference that companies want people to believe. But then admitting that would require admitting that they've failed in other things such as actual game design quality or proper marketing both to consumers and developers. Besides, piracy will happen. Period. Companies obsess over it because they must have an iron-grip control over every aspect of their IP or they get really upset (and of course a part of them realizes that it makes such a great scapegoat to blame failures on) but their attempts to force this iron-grip control ultimately do much more harm than good. They spend more on AP measures like obsessive DRM (yet can't raise the price of the game just because they paid so much for obsessive DRM) and it causes problems for actual legitimate users as well (my favorite being the example of Spore which had an actual install limit so you could only install it a certain number of times before it would refuse to ever install again without getting approval from EA which probably will stop working if it hasn't already someday as the servers eventually go down if they haven't already. Well, luckily it wasn't really a very good game anyway.) Some people even refuse to buy the obsessive DRM versions of things and often wait for a DRM-free version to appear (myself included. I've yet to buy anything with Denuvo and don't plan to change this for example. But GoG has way too much of my money...) Sometimes over-the-top DRM even causes slowdowns and crashes. It's a convenient scapegoat, but it definitely is a bad one no matter how convenient it may be.

 

[Bird Flu]

Not really. A good game library is what drives the sales of a console. The Wii U is absolutely abysmal, and even though homebrew and backup loading existed for a very long time, I had absolutely no reason to put custom firmware on mine until after over a year of owning it because there were absolutely no games worth playing until BotW. The majority of the library is "HEY GUYS, WE KNOW YOU LOVE MARIO, SO HERE'S 18 MARIO TITLES THAT HOLD YOUR HAND WHILE YOU PLAY! OH, YOU LIKE OTHER NINTENDO TITLES TOO? WELL HERE, HAVE SOME VIRTUAL CONSOLE REHASHES, AN ANIMAL CROSSING BOARD GAME, AND NO METROID!" The homebrew scene is even lacking because there's just no interest (no offense to developers, you guys are awesome and aren't at fault). People that install custom firmware make up a miniscule demographic and honestly have hardly any sort of impact on the actual money a console brings in. Take the PSP for example, which was incredibly successful. This is solely based on what it had to offer, game and media wise (it popularized mobile h.264 playback), and was hardly affected by the homebrew scene, which had kernel access from nearly the very beginning of the console's life. I hate it when people complain about homebrew, and even piracy, killing off a console because it's purely ignorant.

That's too bad, you missed out on at least 15 quality titles besides BotW