Just a couple of months ago, hardware hackers released a tool called Pegaswitch that allowed Nintendo Switch owners to fiddle with the console’s inner workings. It didn’t allow homebrew apps to run, but it was a promising start. Now it looks like a full-on jailbreak for the Switch may be just around the corner.
At the 34th Chaos Communication Congress in December, a trio of hackers showed off their progress. Armed with an FPGA and documentation about NVidia’s Jetson TX1 dev board (which is apparently quite similar to the NVidia-supplied hardware in the Switch), the team was able to write a modified kernel to the console.
Their next goal: to release a simple homebrew solution with assistance from the crew behind PegaSwitch, ReSwitched. It could be coming as soon as February first going by this tweet from one of the presenters.
Feb 1st pic.twitter.com/NHa0kfXLAI
— plutoo (@qlutoo) January 3, 2018
There’s also the distinct possibility that someone else will beat them to the punch. Ars Technica reported yesterday that other groups appear to be close to releasing their own tools.
One of those groups is Team-Xecuter, who have been hacking consoles for more than 15 years. On January 2, Team-Xecuter announced on their blog that they are preparing to release a solution that will work on any Nintendo Switch regardless of the firmware version it’s running. They also say it’s completely future-proof and offered a sneak peek on YouTube:
Another group, Fail0verflow, says they’ve also cracked the Switch. It’s a software-only mod and, Like Team-Xecuter, they say their method can’t be blocked with a patch (at least not on the Switch hardware currently available on store shelves).
Regardless of who gets there first, this is excellent news for Switch fans. It’s a great little device that’s just begging for an easy way to run homebrew apps… and it looks like you might not have to wait much longer to do just that!
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14 Comments on "A Nintendo Switch Jailbreak Could be Coming Soon"
I guess piracy is going to happen on the Switch soon. Anecdotally, I know a good chunk of people in real life and virtual (Internet) who stopped buying games and began pirating instead after these jailbreaks/hacks got released for their console/device.
“Homebrew” are these people’s euphemism for pirating.
I personally have never bought a PS3 or PS4 but to me, it doesn’t make sense to pay again for Tekken 3 from the PS store when I still have the physical media from PSX days. My guess is that a lot of people will be using their switch as a retro emulation machine in addition to its normal function.
I’m guessing also a lot of people playing Switch and retro games they’ve never payed for.
That’s what backwards compatibility is for on the Xbox One front. When they first announced the backwards compatibility feature, they made sure to take a jab at Sony for that too by explicitly making it clear that you don’t need to pay again for games you already own. The crowd went wild when they made the announcement too. Anyways, this’ll probably enable emulation of older systems on the switch, maybe even as new as Wii or 3DS games can be played on the Switch now.
Uh… No? Homebrew is simply code not officially supported running on a device. Piracy is piracy.
I understand your argument but sadly it fall short ,since the console isnt even in its 1st year!
1/I’m all for playing games where it the most conveniant but the cons. of jailbreaking outweight the pros.
2/For preservation,pls nintendo is known for enabling backward compatibility not for closing game server except for the wii/gamespy buyout
3/why would 3rd party develope software ,when there a chance that
-it enable cheating (might sold less);
-it be backuped at launch(lost sell)
End result is platform failure
Anyway ,i’m all for jailbreak but not before mid gen
Didn’t Nintendo just recently shut down the store for DS and users had to download the games they bought and they also lost any remaining credits in their account or something?
To be fair, the copyright law as it is right now is pretty unfair. I mean a 100 years protection ia just too long. It should have stayed as it was; valid for 7 years.
Yes they did but you cant still buy them on the 3ds eshop
btw did you expected them to leave the ds store open, when the console been hacked to the moon and back and cant be patched??
And as for the credit knowing that point generator exist its the same as cd key pre steam era
If Nintendo had prioritized Virtual console maybe less people would be clamoring for this