Nintendo 'looking into' SpotPass for automatic 3DS firmware updates

@FrozenPlasma

Sooooo.... this is the amazing "state of the art" anti-piracy system that the 3DS was going to have and that all the software developers were so "amazed" to see....upgrading anywhere, anyplace, anytime.....and not asking for it??? yeah right.........this amazing protection is going to last 3 days.....

@(Unverified)

No, this is part of the anti-piracy system. It is designed to prevent pirates' flash carts from working in the first place, and it would be a very powerful tool to have.

@Esposch

Why so many downvotes?
It isn't the whole anti-piracy system, it will make it harder to hack your consoles initially, and it will be a powerful tool for fighting pirates. What part of my comment was wrong?

@Esposch

seriously man, for how much time companies had tried and tried and tried to stop crackers?? ( and it´s the crackers they want to stop, crackers break protections, pirates get those cracked versions and share them it´s not the crackers who do this) and when they have succeed??? tell me ONE successful story....yep there is none, the only protection which survived a good amount of time was starforce which was able to stay uncracked for a year, and then it was destroyed. Now starforce is as easy to destroy as any of the big protections available, the ps3 has the same story, this CAN¨T BE STOPPED as easy as that, and as always the only way to lower the damage is to create quality products, period. But nintendo just like all the other companies are only worried because they want to put as many crappy games as possible to sell for the 3ds instead of creating good titles, just like they did with the DSi, more than 5,000 games.. too bad that at least half of those games are garbage, but hey!! they want to sell that garbage so they are more worried for protections than for quality games.... the same old story...

@(Unverified)

Imagine the PS3 with Auto-updates.
The pirates would have been stopped before their Jailbreak dongles even arrived.
The 3DS could be a really, really powerful too against stopping pirates.

And want some success stories:
- Microsoft's banning from XBOX LIVE discourages a lot of people from flashing their 360s.
- Sony's PS3 was unhacked for 3.5 years, and within 2 weeks the Jailbreak has been fully patched out.
- The original XBOX, despite being based on x86 hardware, still hasn't been emulated properly yet.
- DSiWare and DSi Enhanced cartridges are still uncracked.
- The PSP 3000 (higher than 5.03) can't be CFW'd.
- The Gamecube's minidisc format put many people off chipping their GameCubes.
- Steam prevents people from burning games for their friends.

Sure, nothing (so far) is 100% foolproof, but the idea is to stop as much piracy as you can. And all of the above examples have been very successful in that regard.

@Esposch

ok, I´m going to comment on your success stories:


The pirates would have been stopped before their Jailbreak dongles even arrived.
The 3DS could be a really, really powerful too against stopping pirates.

First auto updates are ILLEGAL, they can do it if you don´t give full authorization if they could then they would have done it for a long time, and again that would only stop the pirates for a short period of time, jailbrak is already upgradable and the firmware version of the dsi that was created is already fixed for the supercard two, so the firmware stopped those cartridges for exactly one day, and as somebody here said: "put the wrong password for your wifi network " that is a very easy and cheap way to stop the auto-update, and the console is not even available yet.

- Microsoft's banning from XBOX LIVE discourages a lot of people from flashing their 360s.

Not exactly like that, first as i have said many times a lot of guys are not really informed of the new ways of flashing xboxes, i have seen many guys with xboxes flashed and they play online, how many times they have been banned? none, there are new methods right now that allow you to play online without any problems, of course microsoft is going to deny this but the true is different. that ban method worked with the first xboxes with mod chips, but even that had a solution, many guys just bought 2 xboxes, one for playing online the few games that they bought, the other one was offline with all the copies that are available for the xbox,.



- The original XBOX, despite being based on x86 hardware, still hasn't been emulated properly yet.

this one has more to do with the fact that the original xbox was crap and to be honest not a lot of people is really interested in an emulator for this console, i can´t remember a single game that was available for the xbox that i really wanted to play.

- DSiWare and DSi Enhanced cartridges are still uncracked.

wrong again, specially with the dsi enhanced cartridges, they are available just like any other rom.

- The PSP 3000 (higher than 5.03) can't be CFW'd.

for now, there are many guys right now on it, and it looks like some of them are in the right track......


- The Gamecube's minidisc format put many people off chipping their GameCubes.

once again there were methods to make them work, it wasn´t very easy true, but once again the whole attention was on the ps2 which was more popular than the game cube, funny though that right now is easier to run those game cube copies on the wii.


- Steam prevents people from burning games for their friends.

there are cracked versions of steam games all over the place, no need to share yours with your friends......

as i told you those "good results" are more the information that companies share than real results, if there where a real cracker-proof protection everybody would use it, even ubisoft with their DRM which i thought was going to be extremely hard to stop was defeated too, but don´t take my word for granted, just wait 3 or 5 months once the 3ds appears and you´ll see........

@(Unverified)

No, none of the success stories stopped piracy outright, but they did help reduce it. That is the point. They are trying to make piracy as expensive and difficult as possible.

And some errors you made:
- DSi Exclusive games and DSiWare cannot be pirated.
- Auto-updates are not illegal.
- The PSJailbreak does not work with any of the newer firmwares, and never will (it is possible to come up with a new hack in the future, but PSJailbreak is dead.)

@Esposch


You are right in that nintendo can try and use any items available to reduce piracy, of course reduce is very different to stop, with reduce you only stop what i call "one try pirates" guys who try as you said to copy the game for their friends, those guys are usually stopped with a registration number, or a fast and cheap protection, with those nintendo´s idea could work, but with the rest those methods are going to be as breakable as any others, and as far as i know you can´t auto update without the authorization of the user, even if it´s a first time authorization nintendo will have to ask you at least once, not even windows can "auto upgrade" without your authorization, and again just block the thing to auto upgrade and the protection is over, a password is more than enough. It will not connect to any open router, only ones you've set up. Otherwise, that would cause legal trouble, because even if a network is unsecured, like your neighbor's for example, it's technically illegal to connect to it, and forget the piracy thing NO ONE wants to have a Nintendo Big Brother that can check what the hell you are doing with your 3ds, no one. And what we can say of the little problems that can arise with this method, for example lets say you walk past an open router, and there is an update and the 3DS tries to grab it, but because of the poor connection some of the files are corrupt and when you try to turn back on your 3DS it is bricked. This will happen to some unfortunate people, I guarantee it. So at the end is not as easy to say "auto" as nintendo is saying it.

as for the DSi-enhanced games, they can be run perfectly well on any of the current DSi flashcarts, and Nintendo made sure that any DSi feature those games might use isn't essential or particularly important to gameplay. In the year and 8 months that the DSi has been out, there have been a total of 2 DSi-exclusive cartridges. One in Japan, one in Europe, zero in North America... and 50% of those titles is a guaranteed shovelware POS that you wouldn't want to play on a flashcart even if you could. I have no idea about the Japanese title, but a single game out of the thousand+ that can be played just fine is completely irrelevent.
The jailbreak might be stopped with firmwares, but at the end is not something that can´t or will not be fixed, right now the easiest way to solve it is not to upgrade, just like with the firmware upgrade of the dsi.

at the end all those "problems" have solutions, even the piracy one, you know which one is??? quality software, sometimes companies don´t really give credit to the users, people ARE willing to pay for a good game, i have seen it, even with pirates, all my friends that have moded xboxes all of them bought arkham assylum original, ALL of them, not a single one stayed with it´s pirate copy, why?? because is a quality product, a great game, yes not all the games can be as arkham, but i think that right now the games industry is trying too much to "milk the cow" and the result is a lot of games, many of them garbage or average, not something that people will buy even less if they can get it free. That´s the true, just look at the 5,000 + games of the dsi, many of them are nothing but garbage, and many others are great games but surprise, they are in Japanese....many great titles that we never play because they don´t bring it to this side of the ocean. So at the end dude, and i´m sure you are going to agree with me we are customers, we deserve quality products, not garbage games, not rushed products, sadly the industry is starting to lose that quality, and in order to make money they make cheap games in huge quantities, instead of quality products that you´ll love to pay. Just wait and see how many 3d garbage are we going to see with the 3ds, sooner or later we are going to hate james cameron and avatar, the success of that movie virtually revived the whole 3d love, something that was dead for a long time, but the problem is that no ONE sees that avatar was (again) a quality product that didn´t depended on the 3d, you could watch it with or without it, it was a great product anyway. But now everybody think that 3d is going to sell, and guess what?? that only means loads and loads of crap, but at the end they are worried for the piracy, yeah that´s a great excuse to forget about quality.......

@Esposch
>Imagine the PS3 with Auto-updates.

That sounds like a bad idea. Imagine the Other OS option being auto-updated away without users even given a choice. I'm sure a lot of people would've liked that.

And really, all potential pirates have to do is, not upgrade to the latest firmware. Even if it is 'automatic', that's not going to work unless the wireless is on, as others have said.

@(Unverified)

You are wrong. Quality software does (almost) nothing to stop piracy.

@Esposch

well, if that´s the case then we are pretty much screwed right??? :P

@(Unverified)

No, because decent protections can help prevent it to the point where it isn't a major issue.

@FrozenPlasma
wifi is always enabled and some access points are open and automatic?

@Esposch
i) You have evidence for that statement? If you do have evidence, why didn't you give the source so we can judge how reliable it is? (A study using BT tracker stats against reported sales, maybe? With MetaCritic factored in? Link please.)

I'm fully aware the person you're disagreeing with didn't quote any evidence either but 'Yes it is' 'No it isn't' is not a terribly helpful argument for anyone. 'No it isn't, here's the evidence' is a lot better.

ii) Piracy rates are not relevant to anyone. The relevant figure is sales only. If a game sells 100k copies and has 0 pirated - piracy rate 0 - that is less of a success (less pay for developers, etc) than a game with the same development cost which sells 200k copies and has 1m pirated - piracy rate 5:1. The question for developers is how to achieve greater sales.

Part of that may involve reducing piracy (for example, maybe they could make that second game get 300k sales if nobody pirated it). Part involves reducing [perfectly legal] used sales. And of course part does also involve positive actions like trying to make as good a game as possible, and marketing it and so on.

@oxfordfishsalon

How is the an inconvenience?

The inevitable hack will release for v1.1, but Ninty releases a new update and suddenly everyone is at v1.2 and that hack is useless to everyone that has or walked through WiFi. Think mutating virus.

@Marco le Polo

Just about every gaming system running some kind of upgradeable firmware has had an update that ends up bricking/screwing up all kinds of systems. That's why I always wait before upgrading. If it's automatic, I will no longer have that luxury. If pirates/firmware hackers figure out how to block it, they will

@EGOvoruhk

So now we have to figure out to protect the auto update feature..and so on
unfortunately your right they will go out of there way to figure out how to do this...it'll be a never ending war between Nintendo and these bastards.

@Hayatoblaze91x
just put in the wrong password for your wifi network and then it cant connect. :)

@limestallc

Correct ..thus we have our hole......if you isolate the 3DS it's completely hackable (unless otherwise)!

@oxfordfishsalon

It's designed as a prevention, not a cure. If you are automatically updated to the latest firmware, you won't even have the oppurtunity to install the hacks in the first place, or if you do it would be very, very limited.

@oxfordfishsalon

I'm certain it will be optional. Nintendo wouldn't get away with making such a thing mandatory, at least in terms of your ability to turn it off

Their logic here is a bit more sinister, in the sense of trapping people who don't think to do that, then they might have updated a few solutions out of existence before they try

@HasteMakesWaste
Won't stop piracy.

@MCHamster
Not everybody who uses Flashcarts are pirates. Some people, like me, like to have their games all on one cartridge.

@pluupy

And you represent less than 5% of flash cart users.

@Anaxagoras

Supposedly they would have at least some kind of basic security like signing the updates.

@Zertoss

That's what i was wondering too. Maybe it's one of those things like universal tag mode that probably isn't going to work that well outside of Japan, but a lot of hotspots i pass at least have some sort of password protection (the kind applied through your browser), though not WEP/WPA.

A very limited, cost-free 3G service would have been better for America, at least.

@Dalrint

They've been quiet on actual details about whether their online play system will advance beyond the friend code jungle. Not a good sign, especially given that they are likely to use the same network for N6 that they do for 3DS

@Dalrint
I agree, the xbox live system is what has kept me from trying to hack my 360. Its just not worth losing community stats and GS. I would love to see such a system implemented on the ds. (Im not much of a pirate btw, I just feel the need to hack every console/portable I own)

@KyGuyTC7


well, then you are not very informed man, i know many guys with "fixed" xboxes who play and enjoy everything on xbox live and they haven´t been banned, there are a lot of new ways to do that and you don´t even need a mod chip or to open your console, and the same happens with the wii.

@Kyouya

I'm surprised I had to scroll all the way down to find someone commenting on this.

Iwata should try his hand at ventriloquism, given his apparent gift for talking out of both sides of his mouth.

@zero2dash
How exactly would the wifi randomly charge a 3DS? Would the 3DS even be able to connect to one of those networks in the first place, much less without a password/account/whatever?