thoughthead

There’s no post this week, so many projects that are filling my time. I’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff over on Nintendo-Scene. There is quite a lot of news happening on that front as well. A new Wii Dashboard that threw some curve-balls at modchips, the homebrew chips got Dual Layer Disc support and one of the smaller homebrew teams released a DVD player for Wii.

One of the project I’m working on is I’m considering opening up a Modding Store. I wont be selling modchips or anything like that but I’d like to sell DIY kits, tools, supplies and maybe even swag and other stuff related to console modding. I’d be happy to hear your ideas on the kinds of things you’d like to see.

I’m not looking to make a ton of money just enough to cover server costs and fund a few projects a year.

          

It’s funny, I’ve been labeled a fanboy of nearly every console brand made. I guess you could say I’m just a fan of console games in general. I usually have no qualms with speaking whats on my mind about something. Recently I’ve been labeled an Xbox/Microsoft fanboy more than anything else. To be perfectly clear I really don’t like Microsoft, I despise most of their products and I’m actually in the process of migrating from XP to Ubuntu (or at least dual booting). I do quite like the Xbox, but that is only because as a gamer the Xbox brand has delivered the goods. The games they make for the console fit my tastes and many of the features are things I’d been begging for ANYONE in the industry to implement for years now. (more…)

          

…and how everyone is a criminal according to the DMCA.

We interrupt this weeks regularly scheduled discussion to take a moment and reflect on the recent events in the modding community. Read this article on Xbox-Scene.

          

I did an interview with a member of the WiiJii modchip team for nintendo-scene recently. I think it’s worth reading. I know as the person giving the interview I asked questions I was genuinely interested in knowing the answers to and to be perfectly honest almost every answer he gave surprised me on some level. It certainly gave me a different perspective on the motivations behind some of the people who make this products as well as changing my opinions of the specific product their team makes.

I’m quite interested in doing more interviews like this so if anyone knows anyone in any modchip teams or even just in the game industry, I’d be interested in getting in touch with them.

          

The concept of hacking has been around as long as there have been things to hack. The concept of console modding has been around as long as there have been consoles to mod. Even back in the old Atari 2600 days people were tweaking their carts, writing unlicensed software and getting the console to do things above and beyond what they were designed to do. When the original Playstation became mainstream back in the late 90s, console modding experienced a significant boost in popularity. One that has only grown since, but with more complex system comes a system that is more difficult to tweak. How does the state of modding fare in the face of the new console generation? (more…)