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Comment by Shinmera | Hacker News Reader

You cannot publish games with homebrew, it has to use the official SDK. Besides that, almost nobody has a jailbroken Switch, so it would make it extremely hard to play any games on anything but an emulator.

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> almost nobody has a jailbroken Switch

This isn't really my scene so I don't know the details, but I remember reading that the first 10+ million Switches produced have an unpatchable bootloader exploit. I'm sure you're correct that almost nobody actually has a hacked console, but my understanding is that they're readily available for people who want one.

> You cannot publish games with homebrew, it has to use the official SDK

This doesn't surprise me much, but does Nintendo state this explicitly anywhere public?

If Nintendo chose to sign an application developed using a 3rd party toolchain, there's no technical reason why it couldn't run on retail consoles.

Yeah, maybe. But also the official SDKs are pretty good and you get support from Nintendo. It seems like a pretty big risk to use an unsupported SDK... for what benefit?

I don't have access to Nintendo's SDK so I can't compare directly, but the article cites an inability to map executable pages. libnx supports this (but of course, this is moot if Nintendo wouldn't let you ship it). But the main benefit is being able to talk about and share your work without worrying about violating an NDA.

https://switchbrew.github.io/libnx/jit_8h.html

https://switchbrew.org/wiki/JIT_services

The OS can do it, and some Nintendo titles on the Switch do use this capability, but I have talked to Nintendo directly about using it, and it's a hard No. I can't even use the JIT feature purely for dev.

Really? What is the justification for allowing Nintendo titles to use it but not third parties? Security concerns?

That's what they claim, but ultimately it's their thing, so they do with it whatever they like.

You don’t let your kids jailbreak their Switch. Because it’s a damn online system, so any leaked info and Nintendo can brick the Switch. And their game states are far too valuable for the kids for that.

Trey can ban the Switch, but offline games will continue to work. Also the account doesn't get banned, so you can buy a new one. (Speaking from experience, unfortunately) You can still play the new Zelda, just can't play Splatoon, Mario Kart, or Smash online then on the banned Switch. It's possible but arduous to rescue the saves off the banned Switch if you have access to a second modded Switch that is not banned (also speaking from experience) and use homebrew to back up and restore your saves, then launch them all from sysMMC with legitimately owned versions of those games and let the cloud save feature kick in. Animal Crossing has a separate dedicated save tool.

Block Nintendo servers, disable auto updates, use separate sysMMC and emuMMC with no unauthorized games or DLC run on the sysMMC. If you follow the main guide everyone uses now, it's pretty safe. But updating becomes a more difficult and manual process. Have to grab a zip of the new firmware from the 'net on your PC and copy it to the SD card to be installed via a homebrew method. Installing games, game updates, and DLC is similarly manual. It's not like the PS3, Vita, and 3DS(?) where you can pull it all off of official servers easily.

Oh yeah, and we're stuck with a "tethered jailbreak", that's perhaps the worst part. Any time you turn off the hacked Switch it needs to be sent a payload from your PC or phone to boot up again then.

Whether it's all worth it depends on your needs I suppose. You could get a bunch of tournament setups going with Smash (or another fighting game) + all DLC for your LAN party and save a bit of money. You can try out new singleplayer games before buying them physically. You can mod games and run emulators. Honestly the Switch scene seems largely less cool than what we had with the 3DS or Wii (Wii U was a little disappointing as well). I barely touch my Switch(es) since getting a Steam Deck.

> we're stuck with a "tethered jailbreak"

Modchipping makes things permanent, although the soldering isn't for the faint of heart.

I was under the impression the modchips were only for non-launch Switches that didn't have the old exploit available and that they were basically doing the same thing. How do they work differently?

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