Nintendo Switch – Homebrew Explosion

For a long while, I have enjoyed understanding how the console modding scene develops. Probably dating back to the SNES age, I was curious about the import scene and eventually delved into modding here and there. Probably the earliest attempt I made was on a PS1 – My first soldering experience.

So yes, backup loading was pretty cool for me at the time. I remember travelling to different countries to see so many pirated games for sale on the street. For a few dollars one could try out the latest game. I’m not going to justify piracy but in certain places that’s just how it went. After a while I understood the backup process. Having internet access and PC to experiment was pretty essential to be aware of a scene and how things develop over time.

It was probably around the Xbox/PS2 era that I started to read up on how softmods allowed cool homebrew apps to be loaded. I was even able to load up a NES emulator on the PS1, use XBMC on the Xbox and run a bunch of elfs on the PS2 using Free MC Boot. My attention weaned off the whole backup loader thing and veered towards running cool apps and getting utility from the existing tech in my hands. Since then I have followed the homebrew scene on every console released. There’s always a bit of drama to be had, whether that’s relating to an individual/team or the corporate companies taking action to issue ban waves – Cat and Mouse games are entertaining!

With exploit discovery, there is an atmosphere of excitement ;). The Nintendo Switch Scene has been blowing up for the last few months with multiple teams and figures discovering exploits. I have been following developments closely and I am amazed at how fast things have been progressing. The Switch is about a year old now and Custom Firmware is already on the way in the form of Atmosphere-NX lead by SciresM. People can view and even contribute here:

https://github.com/Atmosphere-NX/Atmosphere

I am super stoked for this and look forward to seeing what features it will rock on release. I admire the approach to this development as there is an open invitation for any developer to contribute to this custom firmware project. Rather than dealing with fragmented and perhaps competitive development projects (apparently exhibited in the 3DS scene), Atmosphere is a unifed platform for developers to align their skills and thoughts into one project. I read a few posts recently that discussed blockchain as a consolidation of fragmented efforts, a unified motive and something that can only evolve through open sourced development on public chains. I found some resonance in between these two ideas – Maybe in a strange way to some.

I have not been able to keep up with the scene as much as I wanted over the last few weeks but I grasped the following:

• Someone independently found a bootrom exploit for the Nvidia’s Tegra X1 SoC
• The flood gates opened and a few other developers/teams released their exploits (Fuse Gelee from ReSwitched and ShofEL2 from Team fail0verlow)
• Fail0verflow went one step further and provided a solution to boot Linux on the Switch (zomg!)
• Plutoo releases fw 3.00 exploit and homebrew loader (other write-ups followed)

Wow! What a week, it seems the ban hammer isn’t the only thing to drop in waves with the homebrew scene literally doing the Mexican wave on their tightly kept exploits.

So what does this mean to me? Not much, it’s very cool and encouraging to see so much progress being made. I am however, still an end user and will wait patiently for the dust to settle and see the best option available to me when I wish to mod my switch. I don’t really want to run Linux just yet and would love to see a dual boot android solution. I rarely play my switch due to time so it has never been online. I am yet to complete BotW and try Mario so my FW sits at a fairly low revision.

Happy days for the homebrew scene and I really hope we see some media streaming apps and maybe a Manga app… Yep I really need that manga app soon lol.

In all seriousness, this is an exciting time for developers and end users. The exploits available for public use are growing by the day and will give interesting end solutions when custom firmware, signature patches and all other goodness are introduced.

It’s worth noting here that perhaps some of the information above may be incorrect but it’s a brief summary of what’s happened this week. If I ever decide to open my right joycon and bend some pins (lol) I’ll do a little write up. Until then, good luck to all scene contributors – Thank you for your hard work!

The Switch is unlocking its potential and it’s going to be an exciting journey on Nintendo’s latest flagship device.