Comment by naikrovek

4 years ago

Nearly forced. once the console downloads the update, it will be applied automatically upon reboot.

The alternative is to never connect to WiFi, ever, and some do that.

Generally, consumers would want to downgrade because older versions have vulnerabilities that are fixed in newer versions. these vulnerabilities allow console owners to do what they want with their hardware, and gaming communities have shown Nintendo time and time again that if it is possible to use game hardware for game piracy, it will be widely used for that purpose.

Those of us who want a neat standardized hardware platform to hack on without pirating anything are in the noise floor for companies like Nintendo, so we have no representation among neither pirates nor the console manufacturer.

19 comments

naikrovek

Reply
mmh0000  4 years ago

I've been out of "the scene" for many years now, but back in the day, I had a Flash Cart[0][1] so that I could have all (literally all...) the Nintendo DS games at hand. I was a naughty naughty pirate.

The flash cart also added some really neat features that were missing, such as: the ability to take screenshots, ability to save and restore a game at any point, ability to load cheats like infinite ammo and such.

Nintendo was/is at war with cart users and any update to a DS with a flash cart stood a good chance of either killing the flash cart or rendering it inoperable until a new firmware was released for the flash cart (which may never happen). There's a long and great history here. And if you want to know more, the GBATemp wiki[3] is a great starting point.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_cartridge [1] https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/3DS_Flashcart_Comparison [3] https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Category:Nintendo_DS

mccorrinall  4 years ago

Switch does not forcefully upgrade on reboot, but you might be required to have at least firmware version x to run game y.

  • hnthrowaway0315  4 years ago

    I Googled a bit more and found the history of Nintendo v.s. fans is fascinating...

    • Moru  4 years ago

      I caught on to their game after I bought the 16 bit console. Haven't touched nintendo since. They think they own the second hand market, you couldn't even buy a second hand game without nintendo wanting a cut of the sale. Every console is missing some feature that earlier had, and then they add that later and sell you the same console, just this time with an audio port! I forget all the details though, haven't really thought about nintendo or other consoles in many years.

      2 replies →

bredren  4 years ago

The Amazon kindle os does not allow downgrades, not sure if it’s using fuses or not.

In that case it isn’t about access to pirated content either—people want to be able to modify it for basic features the company has neglected to provide.