Hacking Are Launch consoles best for Homebrew?

wiifan_zangief · Feb 9, 2014

I have a launch Wii (2006) and it was easy to make homebrew run on it compared to later versions of the Wii. I assume it's because of updated systems updates.

I'm thinking to buy a Wii U now and was wondering: Is it probably going to be easier to one day get homebrew on a launch Wii U?

As far as I know, the new bundles (like Wind Waker) got a newer system version.

BlackWizzard17 · Feb 9, 2014

Now remeber the wii u is only homebrew avalable on the vWii side just incase you didnt know.
And as far as the wind waker bundle goes, that side of the vWii is still hackable.
Its basically having a hacked wii inside a wii u but more dangerous if you dont know the difference.

Cyan · Feb 9, 2014

all system versions have the same "hackability" of their Virtual Wii.

In general older consoles are better, not only launched ones, due to hardware/software revisions which can prevent hacking.
But that doesn't mean that newer are bad. it all depends on the method used to hack it and existing exploit at that time.

For WiiU, all consoles hadware/software revisions are fine if you want to hack vWii side.
For Wii, that's the same! you don't need a launch Wii to make it easier. all of them are hackable the same way: use a game exploit, and launch homebrew.

wiifan_zangief · Feb 9, 2014

I just remember that I read of people having problems to install homebrew on their newer Wiis.

And I was actually not talking about vWii. I assume that sooner or later there might be homebrew on the actual WiiU, too.
It may sound weird, but one of the main reasons for me to get homebrew is the fact that some Wii games (and WiiU games for that matter) destroy the disc drive! The Call of Duty series is especially known for it. The disc drive works like crazy and eventually it dies.

Taleweaver · Feb 9, 2014

wiifan_zangief said:
I just remember that I read of people having problems to install homebrew on their newer Wiis.

Erm...all wii's are equally hackable, with the exception of the wii mini. But that is because the latter has no SD card; it had nothing to do with the firmware. Of all the released glitches, only the twilight hack and bannerbomb were fixed, but letterbomb was never fixed. My guess is that those people either attempted older guides (letterbomb was released relatively late in the wii's life cycle), or had a wii mini.

That said...it might actually matter. I used to think that when a hack was found, it would work on the (at that time) newest firmware...and would be fixed in a next firmware version (once nintendo had a proper look at that hack)*. However, Crediar corrected me on that, as it turns out that nintendo is already busy fixing potential loopholes between firmware versions.

So my answer to the original question would be: it's certainly possible that wiiu homebrew hacks will only work up to firmware <insert number>. No idea how likely it'll be or whether the wiiu will even be hacked in the first place, but "not upgrading" is a good idea (well...if you can miss on the features an update brings, that is).

*kind of like the trucha bug on the wii caused people to stay on lower firmwares or downgrade certain IOS (or IOS'es...I'm not too familiar with that situation) at a certain point in time

wiifan_zangief said:
It may sound weird, but one of the main reasons for me to get homebrew is the fact that some Wii games (and WiiU games for that matter) destroy the disc drive! The Call of Duty series is especially known for it. The disc drive works like crazy and eventually it dies.

Yes...that certainly does sound weird. Of course disc drives may get worn out by heavy usage, but I really doubt certain games can destroy a disc drive faster than others (it's just one's and zeroes on that thing that get scanned by a laser...this is kind of like saying my barcode scanner can get destroyed faster if I scan too much mars bars).
For the record: you can buy (nearly?) all games on the eshop as well, rather than having them on disc. That way, you can put it on the (small) hard drive or an external USB-drive and thus save your precious disc drive.

wiifan_zangief · Feb 9, 2014

Taleweaver said:
Yes...that certainly does sound weird. Of course disc drives may get worn out by heavy usage, but I really doubt certain games can destroy a disc drive faster than others (it's just one's and zeroes on that thing that get scanned by a laser...this is kind of like saying my barcode scanner can get destroyed faster if I scan too much mars bars).
For the record: you can buy (nearly?) all games on the eshop as well, rather than having them on disc. That way, you can put it on the (small) hard drive or an external USB-drive and thus save your precious disc drive.

The Call of Duty games are not available on eshop (for whatever reason)
Since you don't believe me about certain games wearing off the disc drive: read the info of this video (it's not mine, but same thing happened to me):
Maybe you are right, it may not have been a hardware problem.

But I am absolutely certain, that certain games (especially call of duty series and red steel 1) make the disc drive work like crazy. I've read this happens if the developer doesn't optimize the game so that the laser has to jump from one place to another distant place very quickly. Whether this killed my Wii disc drive, I don't know, but the noise is a common topic among call of duty players on Wii (and Wii U players also complain about the noise).

Edgarska · Feb 10, 2014

This sounds crazy, but I've had 3 Wii disc drives stop working while playing CoD: WaW, which seems too much of a coincidence. Different discs too, so it wasn't a faulty disc.

Rinnux · Feb 10, 2014

Older consoles are always better. I believe what he read about newer wii's being harder to hack was the whole bootmii thing. The newer wii's had an updated boot1 so people could not longer install bootmii into boot2. But other than that the hackability is the same

wiifan_zangief · Feb 11, 2014

There is sth I forgot to ask in the opening.
It refers both to Wii and WiiU:

If you set back your launch console ("format") in the options menue, it will be set back to the very first system version.

But what if you bought a Wii or WiiU with a pre-installed update? Will it be set back 1.0 or the version you bought it with?

Sinistral89 · Feb 11, 2014

No it won't be set back to 1.0 or anything else for that matter. If it is on 2.5 it will be on 2.5 and vice versa (No idea what the actual version is right now).

matt1tude · Feb 11, 2014

Black Ops on wii does over work the disc drive. it caused my drive to die.

stomp_442 · Feb 11, 2014

I once read somewhere that the Wii has to access the disc continuously when playing cod multiplayer because the Wii's memory isn't big enough to load the map into. This could be one of the reasons as to why there is dlc for cod on Wii/wii u, I guess that nintendo had to do warranty repairs on some Wii's disc drives due to the cod game breaking the drive and wanted activision to pay for some of the repairs. Maybe somebody knows the whole story about that , I know I don't remember much of it. I always played cod from usb so I didn't have any problems with my disc drive breaking.

wiifan_zangief · Feb 12, 2014

SickPuppy said:
I once read somewhere that the Wii has to access the disc continuously when playing cod multiplayer because the Wii's memory isn't big enough to load the map into. This could be one of the reasons as to why there is dlc for cod on Wii/wii u, I guess that nintendo had to do warranty repairs on some Wii's disc drives due to the cod game breaking the drive and wanted activision to pay for some of the repairs. Maybe somebody knows the whole story about that , I know I don't remember much of it. I always played cod from usb so I didn't have any problems with my disc drive breaking.

OT: Unfortunately we can only speculate. Another speculation is that Activision wanted to have more control over their content (DLC). If you got a Black Ops save file on the Wii, you automatically get another one called "pay and play". Sounds strange. Maybe Activision wanted to do sth but couldn't for whatever reason. There was indeed DLC for some Final Fantasy game on the Wii Online Shop a long time ago.

But if memory is the problem, then how come this problem still exists on the WiiU?! Doesn't the Wii U have much more memory (RAM) than PS3 and 360? Or does the disc drive go crazy there, too? Never heard of it.

Luigi2012SM64DS · Feb 12, 2014

wiifan_zangief said:
OT: Unfortunately we can only speculate. Another speculation is that Activision wanted to have more control over their content (DLC). If you got a Black Ops save file on the Wii, you automatically get another one called "pay and play". Sounds strange. Maybe Activision wanted to do sth but couldn't for whatever reason. There was indeed DLC for some Final Fantasy game on the Wii Online Shop a long time ago.

But if memory is the problem, then how come this problem still exists on the WiiU?! Doesn't the Wii U have much more memory (RAM) than PS3 and 360? Or does the disc drive go crazy there, too? Never heard of it.

The vWii doesnt have access to the extra RAM.

Ray Lewis · Feb 12, 2014

wiifan_zangief said:
I have a launch Wii (2006) and it was easy to make homebrew run on it compared to later versions of the Wii. I assume it's because of updated systems updates.

I'm thinking to buy a Wii U now and was wondering: Is it probably going to be easier to one day get homebrew on a launch Wii U?

As far as I know, the new bundles (like Wind Waker) got a newer system version.

Without reading across this thread I wanted to add "It depends." vWii is not blocked (yet), many will point this out. I am not aware of HARDWARE revisions aside from the basic versus deluxe Wii U. If you followed the PS3 and ESPECIALLY the 360 then you know how much of a difference a hardware revision can make. Nobody has a publicly working Wii U exploit (yet) and the tri-core stuff Maxternal is working on (thread is called 3 core) works on vWii and does not seem to be impacted by updates (so far). Nintendon't for gamecube games seems to be coming along nicely (ironing out compatibility issues it seems).

Last I knew, Marcan and f0f said the updates had not changed their hack(s). So, right now, no difference. The updated Windwaker bundle seems to be software only--out of the box with a newer firmware. OH, somebody said older models are always better. They are more likely to have hardware vulnerabilities that are not "fixed." For 360, early "fat" models were hacked via JTAG. 360 came along with the slim models eventually. Then it was discovered that a reset glitch could hack just about ALL 360 models. At this point it was a lot better to have a SLIM. I'd say the slim Trinity revision was THE best. So really you never know. Get an early 360 and risk the RROD, roflmao, or have one of those, hear the slims were hacked using an reset glitch, then upgrade to a slim and not worry about the RROD. That 360 slim was the best system I've owned thus far. I traded it for a Wii U....

3bbb7 · Feb 12, 2014

wiifan_zangief said:
The Call of Duty games are not available on eshop (for whatever reason)
Since you don't believe me about certain games wearing off the disc drive: read the info of this video (it's not mine, but same thing happened to me):
Maybe you are right, it may not have been a hardware problem.

But I am absolutely certain, that certain games (especially call of duty series and red steel 1) make the disc drive work like crazy. I've read this happens if the developer doesn't optimize the game so that the laser has to jump from one place to another distant place very quickly. Whether this killed my Wii disc drive, I don't know, but the noise is a common topic among call of duty players on Wii (and Wii U players also complain about the noise).

I'm sure running that wii with the fan completely blocked off didn't help contribute to his drive failure at all

I had a wii from about early 2007, drive broke in about three years and i sent it in, they sent back a working one, whether it was fixed or a brand new console (probably new because the nickname was changed and there was no boot2 for bootmii), they got one back to me. I didnt play too many games so I doubt it was that, and the games i did play were all nintendo games, like AC:CF, mario kart Wii, etc. Probably just something faulty with the systems

wiifan_zangief · Feb 13, 2014

Luigi2012SM64DS said:
The vWii doesnt have access to the extra RAM.

Of course. I meant the two Call of Duty games for WiiU. Apparently the disc drive of the WiiU also makes a lot of noise during online play of Black Ops 2 and Ghosts. I was wondering why. The console is about as powerful as 360 and PS3. Maybe they have the same problem there. I think CoD on PS3 can't be installed either.

ray: Yes, I guess we will never know beforehand.

stomp_442 · Feb 14, 2014

wiifan_zangief said:
Of course. I meant the two Call of Duty games for WiiU. Apparently the disc drive of the WiiU also makes a lot of noise during online play of Black Ops 2 and Ghosts. I was wondering why. The console is about as powerful as 360 and PS3. Maybe they have the same problem there. I think CoD on PS3 can't be installed either.

ray: Yes, I guess we will never know beforehand.

I haven't noticed much noise from my wii u drive when playing ghosts or bo2. I played the hell out of bo2 and no problems with anything yet.

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