Now that the Wii's been hacked, what's next?

by Candace Savino { Dec 31st 2007 at 8:00PM }

Remember those dudes that hacked the Wii? Brushing, the guy who presented the exploit at 24C3, was recently interviewed about his future plans for the system. The natural first step, according to him, is to implement a version of SDLoad for the Wii. Then, once that's out of the way, he would like to see a Linux Channel for the console. Still, Brushing notes that it will probably take a while before he and the groups he worked with are able to reach these goals.

Also, if you're worried about this development opening the floodgates for piracy on the Wii, don't be. Brushing seems hesitant, at least for the time being, to release the hacked information and keys to the public.

To read the full interview with the author of the Wii exploit, go here.

[Thanks, Craig!]

Tags: 24c3, brushing, hackers, hacking, hacks, homebrew, linux, sd-load

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

mian @ Dec 31st 2007 8:28PM

>Also, if you're worried about this development
>opening the floodgates for piracy on the Wii,
>don't be. Brushing seems hesitant, at least
>for the time being, to release the hacked
>information and keys to the public.

I'm worried about development dying. If the information is out there, someone will always be working on it. If it's kept closed up, development stops when the team has other things to do. Look at GlovePIE.

Good news is that now people generally know how it's done, someone else will duplicate their efforts. Someone's bound to release the info publicly.

Jhongerkong @ Dec 31st 2007 8:43PM

Porno Channel anyone?

CalcProgrammer1 @ Dec 31st 2007 9:07PM

Path to piracy or not, I wish these people would release their findings! Piracy is the small price you pay when you can have Linux as well as other free games ported to the platform. Sure, there's a bad side to everything, but if you have something Nintendo can't stop with the next update, then you don't risk them killing it off.

What I'd like to see is something like FlashMe was for the DS, where a hacked Wii firmware prevents Nintendo from forcing their firmware updates on you. I'd also like a GC homebrew booting system such as SDLoad implemented, but that's minor, as long as it can run Action Replay or SD Media Launcher disks.

But still, I'd love to see Linux on the Wii (stream MP3 from SD card or network, play videos, browse the Internet with a real browser like Firefox, use keyboard to type documents, use instant messaging, etc).

Anticrawl @ Dec 31st 2007 9:20PM

Yes cause looking at a 480p version of a standard Firefox browser is SO much better than an optimized version of Opera for 480p and the Wii.... what an imagination.

Anticrawl @ Dec 31st 2007 9:22PM

Not to mention the memory leaks. Yeah I like Firefox as much as the next anti-microsoft activist but come on, do you really think it would be any better than Opera, not to mention the memory leaks they can never seem to fix. (Yes yes I know there are a few hacks for the browser that can provide a paper-clip and gum type of fix).

Ghen @ Dec 31st 2007 10:07PM

anticrawl.. the memory leaks are fixed in firefox 3's beta.

CalcProgrammer1 @ Dec 31st 2007 10:35PM

If they ported Linux to the Wii, they'd obviously make it 480p friendly. With Opera, you're stuck with a lousy every-6-month-or-so release schedule. With Linux, you could get Flash 9 (if there's a PPC Linux version), JavaScript, Java (now that it's open-source), and other features that desktop browsers have.

Also, Linux is more than a browser, a port of VLC Media Player would allow it to run pretty much all video/audio files as well as play DVD's (assuming a softmod can unlock the drive like was done with the GameCube drive for mini-DVD-R's).

raindog @ Jan 1st 2008 12:51PM

I want Linux and X.org on the Wii as much as anyone, but you're not going to have a very fun time running X, a window manager, Firefox and a JVM in 64MB of RAM, Calcprogrammer. Also, while the Wii browser has some annoying limitations, including the increasingly old and busted Flash implementation, Javascript is pretty good on it, and now that it supports the $30 wireless USB keyboard I picked up last month, it's actually not painful to use at all.

Playing MPEG-4 videos off of SD, though, whether in VLC, Xine or Mplayer.... I'd be all over that. And the really exciting thing will be when someone ports SDL and gets the Wiimote working fully with it, because then we'll see the kind of whacked-out game ideas a commercial developer would never try. And, you know, 50 Bejeweled ripoffs.

Otis Whitaker @ Dec 31st 2007 9:48PM

I sure as hell hope this leads to some sort of soft modding so I can do some things everyone on here would hate me for!

Ghen @ Dec 31st 2007 10:08PM

I just hope it allows me to turn the system on with a game in the drive and have it go right to the game. I can't stand how obtrusive this current-gen of consoles is with their home screens.

Metayoshi @ Jan 1st 2008 5:35AM

Yea... I'm also not a big fan of the home screens of current generation systems, but I don't really mind it except when I'm trying to play a gamecube game on my Wii. With Wii games, I'm at least holding the controller already when I boot up the game, but for Gamecube games, I have to put away my Wii controller and then pick up my Gamecube controller. I say the next firmware update should let us use Gamecube controllers on the Wii Menu like classic controllers.

As for the hacked Wii, I'd really only be interested if I could use it to watch my anime (or any video for that matter) encoded in the h264 or divx/xvid format... I really hate the photo channel's limited MJPEG video with crappy PCM audio only.