The good news is that it looks like this new patch won't affect anyone who always has Luma3DS custom firmware installed, and there are other methods for hacking your 3DS, but they're a lot more convoluted. The bannerbomb3 method was super easy and essentially foolproof.
Really shitty of Nintendo to sunset the console and then close the door behind them on the way out. Homebrew communities have been doing their damnedest to keep the 3DS (and its extensive library) alive... but that's Nintendo for ya.
> Really shitty of Nintendo to sunset the console and then close the door behind them on the way out.
The age of abandonware[0] is over. The promise of future earnings from streaming/downloads means all major content producers will lock down even out-of-print works, like consoles from previous generations.
This is just another casualty of the fight we were having 20 years ago, re: copyright. We lost. It's over.
I feel like it probably costs them very little to keep every title listed for sale. They could be making revenue from it. Probably not as much as when the stuff was new, but something.
I guess by cutting off supply of the old stuff, though, they can do re-releases and re-masters charging somewhat similar to the price of a new game, or get people to pay a monthly subscription fee for access.
Keeping stuff for sale can be expensive because of licensed assets. Licensed music has taken games down before and it will again. I don't know the publisher contracts Nintendo signs, but if there's a time duration in the contract, that may open up a very expensive "deal with keeping track of which developers relicensed their games" problem.
That said, I 100% believe this is just a way for them to make sure you can't mod second hand 3DS consoles in five years time when they bring 3DS re-releases to the Switch.
> Very expensive "deal with keeping track of which developers relicensed their games" problem.
There is tons of licensing issues in the gaming industry under the surface that causes problems all over the place. An extreme example would be Sega's mistakes with Sonic.
Sonic 3, despite not having him in the credits, contains some works by Michael Jackson. That has complicated things tremendously in re-releases, so much so, that Sega has re-released that game far less than Sonic 1, 2, and CD. Sonic Origins, the latest re-release, contains redone music from prototypes rather than solve the licensing quagmire.
But that's not the only licensing quagmire. Guess why the Sonic movies don't have almost any soundtracks or sound effects from the game? According to the Directors, it wasn't a thematic choice, but a legal one. Sonic CD's re-release on smartphones had a similar issue with the opening scene having the vocals removed, because they were from an obscure band that went through a series of legal changes, acquisitions, member changes... This is actually a big problem with re-releases in general. Hunting down who actually owns the rights to a series can be a mess when acquisitions are involved; and you'd better hope the new owners at the end of the road are reasonable and not eager for a quick buck.
And to top it all off, just look up the Kenneth W. Penders story, which single-handedly took advantage of Sega's lax copyright protectionism to "steal" almost 200 characters right from under Sega's feet. Nintendo is no doubt looking at that, and the Sonic music issues, and thinking... man, this is why we protect.
Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 haven't been available on digital marketplaces for a while because both games include real historical footage that Konami no longer has the rights to use. (Off the top of my head, MGS3 used clips of some nuclear weapons tests, for example.)
Additionally, the Metal Gear Solid Main Theme is reportedly not available anymore because of debious copyright battles with a russian composer, which led to MGS4 having the Love Theme instead.
> Wouldn't this be a work of the federal government and in the public domain?
Not necessarily
EDIT: This got prematurely sent and thus was overly terse: contractors and other private parties connected to government test may have been permitted to take photos, and those (even within the scope of work of a government contract) may be subject to copyright. (Also, its theoretically possible that some tests were photographed by people with no formal connection to the test, though the remote locations and lack of announced times make that challenging.)
Have people building games today that use works under license learned this lesson and purchased perpetual licenses, or are they still trying to save money by purchasing narrow licenses that don't work for re-releases or remakes or similar?
If the agency won't offer a perpetual license at a reasonable price, their content shouldn't be included in the game. It's inexcusable that games are still being removed from sale in a medium where the cost of manufacturing a copy is 0 because the makers of the game signed a bad contract on some minor piece of content in the game and don't want to be bothered removing it.
You agree, I agree, but try telling that to the C-level exec who really wants to use "Stressed Out" in part of the game.
If they ARE using licensed things that are non-perpetual, they should arrange for some way to remove them, if possible.
And it sometimes is impossible, the "Poker Night at the Inventory" games are no longer available because the character licenses expired, and they'd be nothing without them.
Its not just an issue of perpetual duration, but the covered media (e.g., when it comes to use in movies), and paying the necessary premium when a future movie is a distant low probability event may not make sense for game publishers.
> Guess why the Sonic movies don't have almost any soundtracks or sound effects from the game? According to the Directors, it wasn't a thematic choice, but a legal one.
Why is this a thing? I've heard of game studios having a movie studio make a movie, but then not allow them to use certain elements from the game. It ruins the movie, IMO, and I've never understood why game studios knee-cap movie adaptations like that.
On the last point, I looked it up and it's an interesting story but it looks like Archie comics is the main culprit behind the lax protection although you could say SEGA is also at fault. Nevertheless, I kind of feel like Mr. Penders won one for the little guy.
If they had kept Super Mario 64 and/or Super Mario Sunshine and/or Super Mario Galaxy available for sale since their consoles were discontinued, Nintendo wouldn’t have sold 9 million+ copies of Super Mario 3D All Stars.
I bet they make more from re-releasing ports of “vault” titles than they would keeping them for sale forever.
> If they had kept Super Mario 64 and/or Super Mario Sunshine and/or Super Mario Galaxy available for sale since their consoles were discontinued, Nintendo wouldn’t have sold 9 million+ copies of Super Mario 3D All Stars.
I think they would have. those games are all available on the 2nd hand market easily. I don't mind paying for remasters of games I already own for older hardware, anyway, because remasters are not a big expense for me and by buying remasters I send my vote that I want remasters.
I mean, it's Nintendo's IP. they can do what they want. I think the way they do things is very short-sighted, though.
3D All Stars has some remastering, but other parts are worse than the original - SM64 doesn't emulate N64 texture mapping properly, making it too blurry, and Sunshine doesn't emulate floating-point properly, leading to physics glitches.
I'm not sure I follow this. afaik this compilation puts it on Switch, since you previously needed an N64, plus Wii and/or GameCube to play the originals. I guess sm64 was available on Wii and 3ds too. Is the claim that they need to de-list those from Wii stores to get people to buy on switch? Was it available on other means for Switch before?
I think a new port requiring a new purchase seems fair, and there's a target market in that one for those who missed those prior generation of games, or who want it on the switch hardware.
> I bet they make more from re-releasing ports of “vault” titles than they would keeping them for sale forever.
Believe me; movie studios and game companies have re-releases down to a science. Disney (arguably) perfected it first with their "Disney Vault" scheme. It increases the value to buyers when it's available for sale; and it also helps the company if there is little new content to offer for the year.
I'm surprised so few people put together that Super Mario 3D All-Stars is actually Nintendo perfectly following the Disney Vault script.
Disney themselves have abandoned the 'Vault' strategy after deciding that continuous sales were more profitable, which probably has something to do with people not recognizing it and/or thinking it's absurd to see in this day and age.
I'm not so sure it would even pay for itself to continue running at some point. It's not like you can just pay to keep the servers running. It's connected to the internet and surely running on a software stack with dependencies that will have CVEs, or language version lose LTS, libraries dropped for support, etc. and need upkeep. How much money in sales could the Wii Shop channel have been pulling in by the time they shut it down? I can't imagine much.
Firstly, I think you're vastly overestimating these costs. Server resources are pretty cheap. They could probably overlap with online infrastructure of more recent hardware. They probably could also budget a small amount of the dev time to fixing a few bugs with extremely low priority, only the most high severity items prioritized beneath servicing modern stuff.
Second, AFAIK they are running those servers right now with no revenue. They blocked new purchases, but you can still re-download existing purchases. I googled around and it seems like that's still the case. I do not know how long they will maintain that.
You also have the customer support overhead. People will demand refunds. They will claim the purchase doesn’t work on their broken hardware. There will be fraud where people use the service to test stolen credit card.
There is also the staffing element. Maybe the engineers or product people are interested in resourcing a product with no career growth.
There is a hefty on-going maintenance cost for these stores.
There was that recent Youtuber that spent a few tens of thousands of dollars on every eShop title before they shut it down, so they made at least that much, but on the other hand, it’s all archived now…
it would cost them very little to keep things online but very little is too much, sometimes.
I would GLADLY pay Nintendo for every ROM I want but do not have, if they would only take my money and sell it.
they choose not to sell. so I feel it is, at a minimum, borderline ok to pirate things that aren't sold anymore. I would give my money, but these companies will not take it.
this is where music downloads were in 2002 or so. maybe a bit later. people were pirating like crazy and record companies would not give users what they wanted: the ability to listen to what they wanted where they wanted.
most pirates (those who don't consider piracy itself a hobby, anyway) don't really want to pirate; they want to play a game, or hear a song, or watch a TV show or movie when they want. They want on-demand access to the things they enjoy. they will gladly pay if only the copyright owners would accept the money, but often they won't.
so the users take things into their own hands. I'm ok with it. but I'm no one and no media company will ever listen to me so whatever.
It remains to be seen whether the soon to generationally churn will succeed in foisting their ways on the yet to exist.
Having a hard time believing a deluge of generative AI content will keep Mickey Mouse worth anything; even if the AI content cannot be copyrighted why would users pay for Mickey Mouse?
This will remain to be seen for a decent amount of time. Generative AI is pretty far from making games as good as the new Zelda without a lot of human work involved (hopefully in the short term we see an indie renaissance).
Given the results I’m seeing generating individual meshes, textures for characters, less than 10 years and everyone will be generating their own stash of Pokémon to randomly distribute around a digital world.
Even with the ornate stable diffusion, mid journey, and all the rest I use, it’s far easier to setup than a Linux project was 10-15 years ago.
A few more iterations on nerfs and the proper porcelain is all it seems like we’re waiting on to me.
Except piracy is pretty awesome and works better than the paid alternatives in many cases. It’s just a matter of perspective who is winning and where they are winning.
If you don't mind spending around $10 USD, hacking an updated 3DS is simple if you get an ntrboot-compatible flashcart [1] and a small magnet. At the moment, Ace3DS X flashcarts are available on AliExpress and work well.
If the supply of compatible flashcarts ever dries up, it will definitely get harder, though hopefully there will be more software exploits discovered by then.
> The usage of this exploit, regardless of the flashing method, requires access to a small magnet if the target device is of a folding style (any 3DS family system that is not the old 2DS with a sleep switch). This is because the exploit requires your device to enter sleep mode while still having access to the buttons.
That's part of a factory recovery mechanism, basically. The system looks for Start+Select+X+Power and the magnet to be detected and it'll immediately fail over to booting from the DS slot.
In the presentation made when it was discovered[0] they said: “The NTR cartridge was likely meant to be used for either the factory setup or as a means of recovering bricked NANDs. However, we'll never know for sure.”
hah! now I remember what that tiny magnetic that's on one of my toolboxes is! Been looking at it for years every time I go to take something out wondering what it was for
> If the supply of compatible flashcarts ever dries up, it will definitely get harder, though hopefully there will be more software exploits discovered by then.
another area of research is many flashcarts are actually obfuscation around FPGA and integrated flash perhaps if there was more interest a design could be produced in the spirit of open-hardware sans Nintendo property.
I never understood why they harshly crack down on homebrew. Pirated games sure, but homebrew? Maybe they dont want parents finding their kids downloaded some R-rated homebrew content?
Jailbreak to running homebrew is often used as excuse to running "copy". To avoid this, allow homebrew officially like Xbox is a way, but maybe Nintendo think it's not their way and it need much internal work cost unless it's Microsoft (the development tools and security company).
I knew someone who was working on something that was meant to stop piracy over at Microsoft many moons ago. Microsoft realized its not their battle to fight, besides most of the pirated software isn't even theirs.
What you're saying makes some sense to me, but I also don't think you can ever truly stop jail-breaking, unless you guarantee the end user is surveilled at all times and can deploy local law enforcement on them the moment they try anything suspicious, even when the device is turned off... Like it would be insanity levels.
Xbox haven't be jailbroken since Xbox One (prev gen, first homebrew support, with virtualization protection tech), so their track record is pretty good. Perfect jailbreak prevention is impossible, but MS does pretty well.
I had no idea, I gave up on consoles and became a PC gamer, I did buy a Switch because I wanted something handheld, but I'll probably get something like the Steamdeck in the future (though I hope it would be the Steamdeck v2).
I found a video that outlines how and why this is:
tl;dr Microsoft provided incentives for people not to even bother trying to jailbreak the console, especially allowing people to buy developer mode for $20, which allows running homebrew applications including console emulators (which had I known sooner, I would have bought an Xbox One ages back so I can emulate old games I have around the house, but dont want to wire up the various consoles I've got, its nicer to just have the one console).
I don't think fixing RCEs in a network connected home consumer device is a shitty thing to do. A lot of people might say it's actually pretty responsible.
From what I can tell it’s not remote code execution as you need to copy files to and from your SD card. This only affects people who want to get full access to their own devices
This is correct. If anyone's curious, here's a page from a 3DS CFW installation guide that explains how the Bannerbomb3 exploit comes into play: https://3ds.hacks.guide/bannerbomb3.html
For context, Bannerbomb3 is an exploit for the System Settings app. [0] It's used to launch a tool which installs some custom firmware on the device. [1]
This is likely due to contract issues - there are many contracts, especially for digital distribution, which have an SLA built in for patching security issues for DRM content. These are basically provisions which allow the contract holder to claw back fees etc. if DRM is broken on a platform for a certain amount of time.
Apple has these with music publishers, especially when the iTunes Store first launched.
Why would anyone agree to an distribution SLA which extends past the distribution lifetime? It also seems odd for such a contract to not matter for nearly 4 years while distribution was active. That's kind of lag would seem to defeat the purpose.
It's hard to say how long "distribution lifetimes" are. If the 3DS flopped like the Wii U, it'd be foolish to sign a 5 year contract. Instead it became a success that went on to stay popular for ten years.
Nintendo also isn't giving you a detailed timeline of their upcoming consoles if you're trying to sell games through their console. For all you know, the Switch 2 is right around the corner and signing a distributor contract now will launch your game onto a dead platform.
In this case I'm referring to the distribution channel itself being shut down earlier this year. If I were going to pick any set amount of years, be it 5 or 10, I'd want the contract to include "or until the service is shut down" so I didn't have to keep updating it once it's gone (assuming this is really even the reason, as the previous 4 years seriously put into doubt).
I can guarantee you that if Nintendo says they aren't patching the console after it's sunsetted, publishers will still happily publish games on the console without that clause in the contract. This is still 100% on Nintendo.
I replied to a comment on some other Nintendo-related post here the other day that began with something like ‘…Nintendo isn’t petty enough to…’ - to which I jokingly replied that I’d stopped reading after that.
Honestly - Nintendo is the pettiest and shittiest to its incredibly passionate fan base.
Where SEGA hires people who have created great fan content, for instance; Nintendo sends out C&D’s.
Nintendo shut off their own revenue stream by closing the 3DS store.
That was their choice. They could still be making at least a bit of money from the 3DS store, but they chose not to.
So…punish the homebrew devs for their own stupid decision? I have never been able to understand Nintendo’s behaviour, especially having grown up in the ROM hacking and fan gaming scene where SEGA and Nintendo could not be more parallel opposites.
Well, here's actually an easy way to rationalize part of it:
Sega doesn't represent anyone. They are in charge of their own games, and that's it. They feel free to allow, or disallow, people to do whatever they want with them. Also, Sega of Japan actually feels not that much love for Sonic and was surprised by his US success - they don't really care; but if you touched some of their other franchises on their home turf they'd have a little more bite.
Nintendo, on the other hand, has wildly successful IP in Japan and the US; and also represents all of the developers on their platform. All it takes is for one developer to complain that people are pirating their old 3DS game and Nintendo should do something about it, and Nintendo doesn't really need to disagree and cause a 3rd-party developer to be upset. It's an easy enough fix, takes little effort, is a reasonable enough request, and keeps the relationship happy.
>I replied to a comment on some other Nintendo-related post here the other day that began with something like ‘…Nintendo isn’t petty enough to…’ - to which I jokingly replied that I’d stopped reading after that.
> Nintendo is the pettiest and shittiest to its incredibly passionate fan base.
Eh... Not really?
I mean, what are we even complaining about here? That a company did some minor step (in a too little too late fashion) to block their old console, that everyone and their dog already hacked?
And even still, how does it impede the homebrew people? Plenty of emulators for every Nintendo console available anyway.
And let's not pretend like this is not going to be bypassed as well. I would be surprised if in half a year there is not a new way to just hack it anyway.
It's almost ironic. Blizzard tried multiple times (and failed) to create some title that made a breakthrough in the e-sports scene.
Nintendo on the other hand had something without even trying, and could have monetized it to no end. But they decided to keep away from it, and took some effort to shutdown the usage of their IP for it.
I can sort of understand the rationale. They are very careful with how their brands are used. Contrary to other videogame companies, Nintendo lives and dies on their brands and IPs. It's their biggest asset, and the only thing ensuring they remain meaningful.
This is somehow so very Nintendo. They're like this grade school jerk kid who when done playing soccer with the other kids insist on kicking the ball straight to hell just so nobody else can keep playing after they're done. You'll pry my Luma3DS-fixed console out of my cold dead hands.
You can still play online multiplayer games. Smash Bros, Mario Kart 7, Monster Hunter Stories PvP etc. The whole Pokemon Bank also works. They only removed the option in eShop to purchase new games, you can still also download everything you bought before.
yeah, I meant if the online servers for games are still up (assuming they still are and they're not connected to the eShop, neither of which I can verify) then there's still a reason to go online on a 3DS in 2023.
Looks like people are still playing MK7 online from a quick google so I assume the servers are still up.
I know nothing about the context behind this (not even totally sure what 3DS is other than some console that didn’t register on my radar). But it looks really interesting. Is there a summary available of the problem, the solution bannerbomb3 offered, what Nintendo did? What I read this update it didn’t seem more than a security update? I see folks talking about this closing the door behind them after ending the console etc. Is this blocking side loading? Sorry for all the profoundly noob/dumb questions but it looks interesting and I’m really interested.
The 3DS is the Nintendo handheld that followed the DS. It has a very robust homebrew scene due to having a passionate community and not so good security. Homebrew allowed for a ton of new features including surprisingly strong emulation, customizing system menus, running your own code, patching of other games at runtime for modding/translating, etc. Obviously it also opened the door to piracy which makes it something Nintendo is eager to shut down. 3DS hit EoL a while ago (users can no longer make legitimate purchases through Nintendo), yet despite months having gone by since then Nintendo has decided to go back and patch up one of the more convenient methods for enabling homebrew which is something that is considered a dick move since they weren't making money off of it anymore anyways and even if they were it is YOUR SYSTEM and you should be able to do what you want with it. Fortunately there are unpatchable zero-day exploits for the system but they are not as easy as the one that Nintendo patched.
Homebrew on Nintendo consoles has always had a really interesting scene but it really took off with the Wii and everything after it. Hackers would keep finding ways to get into everything and Nintendo would hastily patch it up in a sort of live cat and mouse game. The exploit that Nintendo patched just recently is not hard to do, but older exploits were even easier. One of the earlier 3DS exploits was to simply drop a modified audio file onto your SD card and play it in the 3DS audio player. You would own the whole device in ten seconds flat.
The Nintendo 3DS was a handheld gaming console released in 2011.
Like many other gaming consoles, you can only run software that is approved by the manufacturer on it. To run your own software ("homebrew"), one has to exploit flaws in the OS and use them to remove these restrictions. One side effect of homebrew is that it often leads to piracy of approved software.
One of the most common step-by-step guides that help users install homebrew uses an exploit called Bannerbomb3 to run the installer. [0] By inserting a malformed DSiWare application onto the SD card, the System Settings app can be crashed in such a way that facilitates arbitrary code execution. The loaded program is then used to install custom firmware.
In March 2023, Nintendo shut down the eShop, the digital software storefront for the Nintendo 3DS, effectively ending most support for the console. After this happened, many people started advocating homebrew-ing 3DSes to allow pirated software to be installed on them, since purchasing software digitally could no longer be done.
Now, 2 months later, Nintendo has decided to issue a firmware update that patches the Bannerbomb3 exploit, preventing new 3DS systems from being homebrewed in this fashion if they are on the latest firmware. (It should be noted that there are many, many more exploits for the 3DS [1], so I'm not sure why they've decided to fix this exact one.)
And yet they've been antagonistic towards the modding/piracy community since the beginning and have one of the most loyal fan bases of any gaming brand. How do you explain that?
(1) Your average Nintendo gamer isn't into the modding scene whatsoever; they just want to play the latest version of Mario Kart.
(2) Their games really are good. So good people will bend over backwards to mod them (or, in the case of older titles, even just play them), despite the challenges. Particularly for games they grew up on.
It's not a mod, per se (and to some extent it's tacitly tolerated by Nintendo), but the Pokemon Showdown[1] battle simulator is one of my favorite examples of a fan-made gaming project.
Competitive Pokemon follows a couple different formats: there's the official Nintendo-sponsored format, known as VGC, which is played on physical game cartridges and uses rules set by Nintendo itself; and then there's Smogon, which is a community-led format with dozens of different metagames and tiers. Players (usually) vote on rules and bans in any given format, and games themselves are played on Pokemon Showdown's browser-based battle simulator.
What makes this so cool is that Pokemon Showdown is a 1:1 replica of how player-vs-player battles function on physical game cartridges—including random glitches and quirks from earlier generations. (Gen 1 Hyper Beam, anyone?) Nintendo hasn't brought down the hammer because Pokemon Showdown is no replacement for actually playing a full-blown Pokemon game, but it's an amazing way to preserve competitive formats from generations past. The DS and 3DS may be dead, but BW OU's weather wars live on...
Because their games are better and more timeless than others. Going back to a nintendo game from 20 years ago is fun and rewarding, going back to a 20 year old game from EA or whoever is a miserable experience
The fanbase skips generations of products so it's not as loyal as it seems. The wii-u never hit critical mass for example. Price over highend quality, quantity of games available wins the day for nintendo. Each time I've picked up a nintendo product I do it because it's the cheapest and has the most games. Original vs sega master system, genasis vs super nintendo, wii over microsoft's surface
It's basically the Disney business model, still mining nostalgic brands from 40 years ago. As a parent I was lucky that I didn't have that nostalgia factor to make me push it onto my kids. I got a Switch based on their "family friendly" reputation, saw how scummy they are with re-releases, random subscription fees, and periodically locking down old games on their emulator, and decided I didn't want to make my kid become nostalgic to that corporate abuse in their future. That's at least one generational nostalgia chain cutoff, but there are many million others out there.
I doubt their loyal audience cares. Nintendo has been a terrible company for decades but it still has fans because the games it produces are fun enough that most people don't care.
Nintendo currently has a large devout fanbase that will defend the company till death, purely because of childhood nostalgia.
Until said fanbase is gone (which is almost never), Nintendo can effectively do whatever they want to modders & homebrewers, with the fanbase continuing to buy Nintendo's products without question.
Sorry, but this is idiotic - Nintendo fanboys are also the biggest critics of Nintendo and are always whining and complaining about Nintendo and their decisions. Nobody is defending Nintendo, ever, it's a nonstop whinefest - "Nintendo is not giving me this," "Nintendo is not giving me that," "Nintendo hates it's customers."
Someone here even said they felt personally betrayed by Nintendo because they bought a Wii U and then Nintendo never released a Zelda title exclusively on that console. That's pathologic.
> Sorry, but this is idiotic - Nintendo fanboys are also the biggest critics of Nintendo and are always whining and complaining about Nintendo and their decisions. Nobody is defending Nintendo, ever, it's a nonstop whinefest - "Nintendo is not giving me this," "Nintendo is not giving me that," "Nintendo hates it's customers."
> Someone here even said they felt personally betrayed by Nintendo because they bought a Wii U and then Nintendo never released a Zelda title exclusively on that console. That's pathologic.
Nevertheless, they still buy their games & consoles. Such criticisms have near-zero value if said fans keep buying Nintendo's products.
If you've installed custom firmware, you can update without any problems.
If you haven't and still plan on doing so, keeping the console offline is your best bet. Deleting the WiFi network is the easiest way to make sure it doesn't update. I don't think 3DS online services are still popular but your son can probably tell you that.
Hacking the thing took me two or three hours in total, with no hardware modification using the guide on https://3ds.hacks.guide/. Most of that was me being careful while reading the instructions and making backups, I'm pretty sure the entire process can be done in twenty minutes. Now that the eStore has been abandoned, it's the only way to play some eStore only titles so it's worth doing if you want to preserve that history.
I interpret this as DS and 2DS games coming to Nintendo Switch Online at some point. Not terribly hard - just have the screens side-by-side, or rotate the Switch 90° for people who want the old experience.
It could even be like how Nintendo is doing the Game Boy last year, with basic Game Boy on the standard plan and GBA with the Expansion pack. Basic DS games would be on the general Online plan, and newer 2DS/3DS games with the Expansion Pack.
I kinda doubt it tbh. Nintendo is notoriously reticent about releasing retro games—even with the GBA expansion pack, they're sitting on a ton of titles that would get people to sign up instantly. Instead we're getting the privilege of emulating GBA ports of random SNES titles.
Unless they prove me wrong and we finally get Mother 3.
Definitely, between DS/3DS games feeling weird emulated on anything else and Nintendo having access to the source code, reducing access to the originals greatly boosts the value of single screen remasters.
Could see the final year or two of the Switch having a bunch of them tbh, similar to some of the bizarre late period 3DS ports (e.g. Bowser's Inside Story)
Zelda remakes in general have been good enough that I would stand by your assessment, but it's also making me think about the how bad Pokemon's BDSP "remakes" were... in that case you really would be better off scrounging up an old copy of Pokemon Platinum.
I cannot see this happening. The Switch is old and the new console will be coming out either next year or the year after. It doesn't make much sense for them to be releasing a lot of new feature that might draw people away from their next console. Now adding games to their next console? I can see that if the hardware is right.
Thing is though, nothing will be as pleasant as using it on the actual hardware. If it isn't on an actual DS/3DS, I don't see the point in playing at all personally unless they radically change the controls to a rereleased game.
I'm curious how the second screen experience will translate. Steam Deck emulators either hotkey the second screen or have a very tiny window on the side.
The WiiU had a second screen already. It was basically a home console version of the DS, so the games translated better there than on a typical console.
I wonder why anyone would update. It's not like new games are going to refuse to run unless you update and the online services that validate your firmware have all shut down. Why even bother?
A bug that is entirely inconsequential except for the very very specific case of a user exploiting it deliberately on their own device to run Bannerbomb3. This is a pointless distinction, the tech equivalent of "I'm not punching you, I am just holding my fist up and running in your direction with my eyes closed and if you get hit it's your fault!"
"Bannerbomb3" is referring to an exploit in their system settings which allowed for custom firmware to be installed on the device. So fixing the bug which allowed the exploit is what is considered to have "blocked Bannerbomb3".
Personally, I think it's rather likely that Nintendo did this specifically to prevent their customers from installing custom firmware on devices they purchased, rather than because Nintendo wanted to fix a bug for any sort of perfectionist or altruistic ("user security") reasons. It can just be dressed up as a security issue, so that's what they do if they feel the need to justify it at all.
And homebrew isn't even exclusively used to facilitate piracy! Like, yeah, obviously it's a big draw. But installing CFW on your 3DS opens a whole world of other cool stuff too.
Oh, for sure. I just mean there's a level of plausible deniability since CFW != piracy. I personally really enjoy the ability to take screenshots with CFW tools, which most 3DS games don't support natively.
Results in the used market become blurry as to whether a 3DS will be hackable or not, which is probably enough of a barrier to block off anyone who'd consider getting one for homebrew that doesn't 100% know what they're at.
Basically an effort to lock 3DS games into a vault until they can find a use for them.
It happening so late into the 3DS life with basically anyone who wanted a hacked 3DS already having one it potentially reduces the amount of manpower that will go into finding an exploit too. I'd say they intentionally waited until after the eshop was closed to release this.
I really doubt it. The switch came out in 2017. The 3ds is a forgotten relic to the generation of kids who are growing up on the switch and getting their parents to buy the first party games. There’s certainly a niche for retro gamers, but if I were Nintendo I’d be more worried about the steam deck taking that audience.
Yeah, I am not sold that it's a real financial threat to Nintendo. It could be! or not. I don't think there's enough public information to be able to say.
However - having followed Nintendo for many years - I feel confident that that is their thinking in pushing this update.
Except.. you can't. There isn't a way to just buy the retro games anymore outside of Nintendo's subscription service for the Switch, and even then it's only a few hand-picked games. And you can forget trying to play 3DS games on the Switch.
Really shitty of Nintendo to sunset the console and then close the door behind them on the way out. Homebrew communities have been doing their damnedest to keep the 3DS (and its extensive library) alive... but that's Nintendo for ya.