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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo could do the exact same thing if they made their platforms open like Steam does. That the switch is limited to only Switch games is entirely a choice they made because their whole existence they've been all about proprietary and locked down.

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I mean, to be fair, the NES lockout chip is what salvaged the video game industry after hoards of shitty games caused it to collapse.

Obviously a lot has changed since then. Now they do it to protect their own IP and investments.

The lockout ship was there to prevent piracy. By the time the console made its way to North America there were known bypasses. Ironically enough if there's an argument to be made about what saved the industry and how quality control was involved it would be the Nintendo seal of quality and then the strong arming that they did to various retailers saying that if they sold any game that didn't have Nintendo's backing they would be blacklisted. At the time being blacklisted by a company like Nintendo where every kid was requesting their product was an impossibility

That's impossible; the lockout chip debuted with the North American version of the console, so there couldn't have been known bypasses beforehand. The Famicom had no CIC.

The lockout chip is what made the "seal of quality" scheme feasible in the first place. If alternative games were widely available, Nintendo wouldn't have had nearly as much leverage to strongarm with.

The minute the device was released in North America the lockout chip was already defeated by passthrough devices that took a "real" game and used that for the CIC bootup process. There were also multiple variants of voltage spike attacks and revisions of the console to guard against those, so it was certainly happening otherwise Nintendo wouldn't have wasted time changing the design.

Also, look at the timeline and the history behind Tengen which was essentially a company created by Atari specifically with the purpose of publishing their games on Nintendo and used essentially corporate espionage to get the underlying MPU used for the CIC logic that was a corporate secret. The actual lawsuits get filed a few years once Nintendo had enough evidence, but it was going on from the start of the lifespan of the console.

The NES was released in North America in late 1985. By 1987 there were commercially available games (from Tengen) that were playable without the permission of Nintendo. Tengen was not the only one or even the only method being used to break that console at that time.

And then there is Game Genie, which effectively can work around all of these problems. Sure, they included some logic to play nice and let the NES check the CIC again, but you can work around that with a game genie code itself! In the early days Game Genie and GameShark devices were well known for being vectors for piracy and they leaned into that.

*EDIT* This doesn't even get into the VAST array of devices that existed to clone cartridges or adapt floppy drives similar to how the Famicom did. At worst those required a stupid dummy cart to sit in them that never gets removed or the manufacturer did that for you and put a CIC in the device. Some used various attacks mentioned earlier to work around even having to do that.

The unlicensed stuff wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous as the shovelware from the Atari era was though.

As an aside to this, are there any documentaries or clips or things to read about "retro" console piracy that necessitated something like the lockout chip? I mean at this point I know about flashcarts but I dont know a thing about back when the NES wouldve been new-ish, let alone before then.

The lockout chip wasn’t about piracy. It was about controlling licensing and trademark usage with 3rd party developers.

That doesn't legally entitle others to copy Nintendo's systems or code...

Steam isn't open, Windows OS isn't even open. Windows is "semi-open", in that Microsoft can't stop you for developing and publishing whatever they want on the platform, while still not sharing source code.

Microsoft only has (de facto) control of the Microsoft Store.

Not sure why you mention Windows considering how Steam Deck comes with Arch Linux out of the box, and Yuzu runs natively on Linux too ?

Steam =/= steam deck. And even then it's not really playing native Linux games if you argue Linux. Its just emulating (in layman's terms, I know what WINE stands for) where most devs actually make their games for.

Microsoft doesn't seem to care (or it's legally dangerous to care). Nintendo does.

What's happening under the hood (Windows translations layer, etc) doesn't really matter for this comparison of Switch to Steam Deck. It only matters what the user is allowed to do/run on the thing. On Nintendo where it's closed, the user is prevented. On Steam Deck where it's open, the user is not.

you seem to be conflating "open" and "open source"

nintendo doesnt have to make the switch open source to make it open, they just have to allow people to make whatever the hell they want for it, but their business model depends on it being locked down (closed)

A bit, but I don't necessarily mean open source either. My main point is that people call Steam "open" but they in fact do not allow you to make whatever the hell you want. They are infamously vague about what they do or don't allow and devs constantly have trouble contacting them when they have issues, be it getting a game on the store, enabling steam features, keys, abusive users, etc.

Given all that this doesn't feel like a plea to let people publish their games. Just a thinly veiled port begging.

I think in this thread we’re talking about the Steamdeck being open, not Steam itself. You can run anything on a Steamdeck, it’s just running Arch

The hardware argument makes even less sense though. People in these circles complain so much about native performance, why would they want to install Linux on a Nintendo Switch like the PS3 days?

Even if they could, it wouldn't let them play switch games better. It doesn't solve the clear problem here that is the super technically minded people wanting to play Mario and Zelda in 4k/60.

I was talking about the Steam Deck. When the original is the Switch, the Steam Deck is the most logical comparison. "Steam" is just an app running on top of the Steam Deck, and that app isn't even privileged on the system. The user could remove it if they wanted to.

"Open" doesn't mean "open source" although in the case of the Steam Deck, it is both (not including the Steam application, but as I mentioned you can use the Steam Deck for whatever you want including removing the Steam application, so it's not a requirement or a blocker. I know someone who installed their own Bazzite flavor that has Steam removed and only uses Lutris to install GOG games).

Also Steam Store's requirements are only for games listed in their store. As has been mentioned, this is not a requirement for running on the Steam Deck. This is in sharp contrast to Nintendo.

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