Hardware Can Nintendo brick my 3DS?

[SilentFreya]

I know this is a little bit old but i wanna know can they brick my 3DS trough a firmware update? Or is this a scare tactic

 

[DiscostewSM]

Can they? Yes.
Will they? No.

 

[sergster1]

They claim they can but it hasnt happened to anyone and the legal ramifications would be huge.

 

[Rydian]

http://gbatemp.net/t284730-3ds-bricking-rumor

 

[Dingoo-fan 32]

Nintendo dont't have enough balls for that

 

[Hydreigon]

They can, but they won't. End of story.

 

[dgwillia]

Worst comes to worst, you get banned from Wi-Fi somehow. (Which i doubt they could even do that).

 

[spinal_cord]

I know this is a little bit old but i wanna know can they brick my 3DS trough a firmware update? Or is this a scare tactic

Can = yes.
Will = Probably not intentionally.

 

[DiscostewSM]

If you mess with your system with things like modifications, and it conflicts with Nintendo's updates/firmware to the point of it bricking your device, then you are to blame.

 

[bahamut920]

There have been no reports that I've seen of anybody's system being bricked because of firmware updates, flashcarts or no flashcarts. Most of those articles are based upon the fact that Nintendo changed one word in the warnings that appear on some (not all) 3DS games from "may" to "will". For reasons that I'm not going to get into because I'm tired right now, it's pretty infeasible for Nintendo to do anything about flashcarts aside from blocking them, or possibly formatting the MicroSD card the cart uses.

 

[koji2009]

Nintendo will never intentionality do so because legally they'd be in deep doo doo... But they also have to cover their asses if they accidently do it too. Hence the warning... For example.. The first versions of flash me for the ds could cause your ds to brick once you used any wifi enabled games... Nintendo didn't aim for that, but it was an unintended consequence to flashme that was fixed in later versions.

 

[gifi4]

They CAN brick your 3DS, but they won't do that because it is illegal, so in one sense they can brick it and in another, they can't, but like others have said, they won't due to the legal implications.

 

[Weaselpipe]

In an ideal world (for them) they'd be able to, though DSi enhanced flashcarts may not be their concern- when 3DS flashcarts arrive we may need to worry! Though IMO it's more likely that any 3DS hack would involve the SD card and flashing the console- which SHOULD make it easier to stop as they could just refuse a certain firmware online access.

They won't though, as much as they want to terrify you the legality of it is so dubious anyway (the age old "I paid for this console thusfore it is mine and I can do what I like to it" argument and piles of other reasons)- that's why we don't get automatic updates as threatened, and they have to warn you before you update about the possibility of ruining your console. Because they are just as scared of legal action as we are, so we have this weird mexican standoff of lawyers that do not yet exist