Hacking Wii Key makes Wii unplayable?

[mike1984]

I was certain I was gonna get a Wii key, but then I thought a little further. I heard of a patch that Apple released that makes everyone with an iPhone that is not AT&T unusable. All they did was send a firmware update, similar to what Nintendo does with the Wii. Now, can that ever happen with the Wii? Is it possible for Nintendo to one day release an update that will make it unusable if a mod chip is found? If not unusable, could they do it so that you won't be ableto play online with your Wii?

I want a Wii key badly but not if it's gonna do that.

 

[Mewgia]

Well it's a drive mod so I don't thik they can do a whole lot about it, and personally I think bricking a whole console that still plays legit games because a modchip is found is stupid but then again Nintendo does some pretty dumb stuff sometimes...but if you're that worried about it just disable auto-updates.

 

[mike1984]

What's a drive mod? What other types are there?

Sorry for my stupidity, i'm pretty noobish at the world of modding.

 

[loresfx]

I dont think nintendo is worried about modders. Out of 100 wii users maybe only 5 get into modding. Nintendo is more worried about getting enough wii's this winter.

 

[dsdork]

I too was concerned that the iPhone bricking would set a bad precedent for modded devices in general. After looking into it a bit, I found some of programmers who developed the iPhone unlocking software have explained Apple did not brick the device on purpose.

"The iPhone bricking problem has been a PR disaster for Apple, making the company look punitive and obsessed with control. But Erica Sadun, a technical writer and blogger at TUAW.com who contributed to an iPhone unlocking application, said Apple's update wasn't designed to disable hacked devices. Just the opposite: Sadun thinks Apple worked hard not to brick iPhones -- even hacked ones."
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentar.../cultofmac_1003http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2007/10/cultofmac_1003

While I do not believe that Nintendo will purposely brick a wii, we have seen evidence of people bricking their own wiis by running updates from the wrong region. This kind of end user mess up seems to be more analogous to the iphone bricking than the manufacture purposely bricking the system.
I do think that Nintendo may decide that users who have modded Wiis might lose their ability to use wiiConnect like M$ does with XBLive. If they can't detect the chip in the Wii, they might do something like check for saves from multiple regions since a chip is the only way to play games from outside your region setting. Thats why I personally don't play anything from outside my region.

 

[manias]

nintendo cannot detect wiikeys so no, it's not possible.

 

[mike1984]

Where's your source on that manias?

 

[tomqman]

Where's your source on that manias?

its common knowledge on the mod scene

 

[ozzyzak]

Where's your source on that manias?

its comen knowledge on the mod scene

Do you realize that there are a lot of things that are 'common knowledge' that are actually totally false?

 

[manias]

the source is this entire board.. and others like maxconsole.
so far there is no evidence nintendo has any way thru firmware of detecting drivemods.
This is probably the case because it doesn't really change wii operations, which is also why we can't run wii homebrew n stuff like that without GC mode!
The only thing they've changed is scare tactics with that screen it displays when u upgrade with the TOS n all.

 

[adgloride]

If nintendo ever found a way to flash the wiikey, in a firmware update. You can always recover the wiikey with the recovery disc.

 

[xbandaidx]

Think of it this way, a drive modchip is different, it's basically acts like a "short-cut" for the information.

I'll try to put it in layman terms.

When you put in a burned game, the Wii will read it and go "hey this isn't real" and it stops loading it from there. Now a drive mod is kind of like a short cut that is made by use of hardware. So now when you put that burned game in, the drive will still say no, but the drive mod is like a shady character it goes "Hey hey buddy (game), why don't you use the back door to get into the club (wii) the game information goes that way which bypasses the bouncer at the front door. As far as the bouncer is concerned, there is NOTHING there. Now because of that, there's no way for the system to know there is something modded.

 

[dsdork]

For the sake of discussion, lets assume Nintendo can't see the the chip and doesn't care to add some sort of update on a disk to flash the WiiKey. Does anyone dispute Nintendo could probably check the game save data and find if there are saves from games outside the Wii's set region? Wouldn't having games from outside the wii's set region be a sure indication that the system is modded? I'm not suggesting Nintendo will do this. I do think its disingenuous to tell a n00b that a drive chip will never have consequences on the Wii.

question:

If nintendo ever found a way to flash the wiikey, in a firmware update. You can always recover the wiikey with the recovery disc.

If the chip ends up completely disabled, how do you boot the recovery disk? I had an openWii chip that was a buggy build and crapped out. I tried the launch a genuine gamecube game and swap to the recovery disk trick but could never get it to work. I had to pull the chip and reprogram it on a PC. If your WiiKey is hosed and will not boot unofficial disks, how would you get the recovery disk to load?

 

[hypermog]

According to this they are quite easily detectable by Nintendo. I don't know if it's true or not.

 

[manias]

if you guys are THAT worried about this just come to the forum and do research before updating anything. That way if nintendo DID brick people you will know beforehand. As of now with 3.1 this is NOT happening, all is fine.
And links like hypermogs just speculate, we can't know for sure what nintendo knows and can detect until they take action. Therefore, once again, read up before you update new firmwares. But right now there is NO danger.

 

[NiGHtS]

When you put in a burned game, the Wii will read it and go "hey this isn't real" and it stops loading it from there. Now a drive mod is kind of like a short cut that is made by use of hardware. So now when you put that burned game in, the drive will still say no, but the drive mod is like a shady character it goes "Hey hey buddy (game), why don't you use the back door to get into the club (wii) the game information goes that way which bypasses the bouncer at the front door. As far as the bouncer is concerned, there is NOTHING there. Now because of that, there's no way for the system to know there is something modded.

I'm ashamed that made me lol.