Nintendo Wii U Hacked; This is the Real Reason Next-Gen Implements DRM

VG Republic Writes: Yesterday came news that a group of hackers known for their work on the Nintendo Wii and the ability to enjoy backed-up versions of retail games, was at it again saying that they have unlocked the Wii U and are working on finalizing the hack of the Next-Gen console. While there were not any true details given other than saying via their website “Yes, its real – we have now completely reversed the WiiU drive authentification, disk encryption, file system, and everything else needed for this next generation K3y. Stay tuned for updates!” said the group via WiiKey.com, there are thoughts that the group is on the verge of breaking through the barriers needed to play pirated or “backed-up” copies of your currently owned Wii U titles.

There are some that will be chomping at the bit to get their hands on the device that would allow you to play games at a rate of free, but the bigger issue lies for those that choose not to go the route of piracy and purchase games for retail costs. Is nothing sacred anymore; have we become so cheap that we can’t just leave a machine for what it is instead of defacing a unit? These are the very reasons that consoles like the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Next Xbox are discussing ways to implement features that discourage use of pirated copies of games, but are even going to lengths of stopping the use of second hand copies of games as well.

[Arai]

The bad luck doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon.
Nintendo is finding itself in some rough waters at the moment.

[Sucitta]

How so, the Wii went on to win last gen, hacked almost right away..

Do you think Soccer mom Sally is going to flash her Wii to play free games or use homebrew? Maybe her daughter Tiffany so she doesn't have to pay for Barbie rides horses?

Out of the 100 million plus Wii sales, how many family's do you think modded their systems?

[MASTER_RAIDEN]

okay so not a ton of mods, but believe me brother that first off, the modded systems were definitely out there. im sure there were most definitely a few million modded wiis out there. secondly, of those modded consoles, im sure a fair percentage have almost thousands of dollars worth of pirated games on them.

nintendo probably lost millions upon millions of dollars due to hacks on its console. just because the problem wasnt widespread in relativity to percentages, doesnt mean it didnt hurt them, badly. i didnt know too many people with modded PSPs or fat 360, but that didnt stop sony from openly admitting that they were losing a ton of money because of homebrew. wii was most likely more of the same, as may be the wii u soon. only time will tell.

[Arai]

Case in point is that hacking is not good for anything.
Doesn't matter if they won the last generation or not, the fact remains that hacking is not good for any company.

[Th4Freak]

Well the difference is that Nintendo wasn't losing money with these modded Wii's, Iwata said that they're selling the Wii U at a loss and they start making money when someone purchase a software so it's a completely different situation.

[fairyblaster]

yeah sure buddy. i want shadow of the C. on wiiU

[Typical-Guy]

It's really unfortunate, but it's ok for them to release already existing games on the Wii U for $60! That's something.

[Sucitta]

EXACTLY !!

60$ for any game that isn't AAA and deserving of your 60$ is a reason in itself to pirate.

Trillions of dollars stolen from the people since the beginning of time does not equate to some tech savvy hackers trying to save some $$$ from a multi trillion dollar industry that will do just fine with the hackers leeching a little.

Make no mistake. DRM is about greed and outrageous bonuses, given to fatcat CEO's that bleed every possible penny from the consumer, just to appease the vampire stockholders.

[Arai]

While I agree to certain extent, hackers usually only cares about filling their pockets and/or just cheap out.

Granted that it's ridiculous to pay 50-60 USD for games that are sometimes 5-6 hours.
Long gone are the days when games usually used to be around 25+ hours.

[DarthJay]

There is never a reason to pirate. If you want the product, you pay for it. If you don't want to pay $60, wait until there is a price drop.

If they want to save money, they can do it by not playing video games. It's a nice luxury to have, but it's a luxury. No one has a right to every video game ever because they are them and god damn it they want it.

There is no justifying piracy. The problem is, people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to complain about the price and then contribute nothing at all. It's a product. You wouldn't walk into a car dealership and say "hey, I love this car but it's too expensive, so I'll just take it," so why are video games supposed to be different? Just because you can do it and get away with it, doesn't make it right or your justifications OK.

[Guwapo77]

That doesn't justify stealing the game because they re-released a game at $60. If you do not think it's worthy, don't buy it. Oh so you say you want to play it anyways? Well you have a couple options...

1. If you like it, buy it at $60.

2. Wait till the price is reduced. All games hit the bargain bin eventually.

3. Don't play the game at all.

I use to play pirated games when I was dumb and didn't fully understand and only cared about my enjoyment and my wallet. I was enlightened after I saw what happened to the Sega Dreamcast. I owned maybe 1 or 2 legit games and over 50 pirated. I to some degree feel responsible for helping my favorite system to date be destroyed.

[Si]

Sega Ceo died during the end dreamcast generation the remaining shareholders sold the company to nintendo. Sega is still around as a developer. They didnt vanish because of pirates.

[I_LOVE_MYSELF]

Nintendo games don't drop easily. I saw Mario64DS in a store the other day for the same price it originally launched at.

[jcnba28]

And which games might they be?

[LOL_WUT]

NSMBU ;)

[sway_z]

I don't see the point for the general gamer population. 25GB games will take a whole lot of storage and let's be honest...there are maybe 3 games worth pirating on Wii U if you're the kind of scumbag who cannot see the harm this type of modding can do to the industry...

Piracy affects all legitimate gamers and I am against.

[dangert12]

I'm not interested in the Wii U but what i think will be interesting is...The POSSIBILITY of boosting WiiU sales for Nintendo...we all know piracy sells consoles.

[Sharius]

what the point of that sale?

they may boost the hardware market a little but in long run they will hurt software market alot

the sale of 3rd party isnt good now, and if nintendo ignore that then even the indie will be scare away

[dangert12]

Not true always the case, take the PS1 and Ps2 for example and even the WII

[MonkeyNinja]

There are many who wouldn't even bother buying a WiiU UNLESS they can hack/mod it. These people will increase hardware sales, but if they wouldn't have bought the hardware if it wasn't able to be hacked, then the games they pirate wouldn't have been bought in the first place. Although it would look bad to publishers/indies. And shareholders. This could be another Wii situation.

[kayoss]

@dangert @ monkeybootey
The difference ps1 and ps2 is back then not everyone have Internet. So the number of people who knew how to mod were very small. The modding occur late in the life cycle of the system. Wii was hacked almost immediately but two reason why it didn't affect Nintendo.
1) the majority of wii owners were parents who bought it for their kids. Most owner were casual gamers who didn't know about modding or didn't care.
2) Nintendo made money every wii console it sold. Wii u, they are selling at a lost

@monkeybootey
It's always the same excuse, either for home brew or I wouldn't have gotten the game anyways. Then why would you play it now? Because you got it for free? If you're cheap then say so. It's a lame excuse.

[MASTER_RAIDEN]

Wrong thread, i know, but.......price drop this baby and im alllll over it.
wii u has a few decent titles to its name, but the bulk of those i could just as easily fire up on my ps3 or 360.

price drop, with or without hacks, might actually motivate me to get on top of this.

[kreate]

Problem with price drops is that, after a price drop is initiated, most gamers wait for another price drop.

[LOL_WUT]

@kreate Really? Because i'm pretty sure if Nintendo price it right tons of people would definitely go out and buy one. Fifty dollars off would be a good start. ;)

[kreate]

@LoL

yea dude.. some ppl would go out and buy a wii-u after a price drop, but some gamers wait for another price drop..

havent u been on CAG? gamers are cheap. including myself.

- and i didnt click on the disagree button

[FlyingFoxy]

25gb per game isn't that big a deal with connections we have nowadays, i'd be able to download pretty fast on my 100mbit connection and i've seen games download speeds hit 12-14mb/s on Steam which is extremely fast.

Only a matter of time before the games hit torrent sites as iso files, plus you'd only need a cheap hard drive like less than 500gb and get a lot of games on it.

As said above though, a lot of people won't even have a clue how to do mod their system even if its pretty easy. And it is nice to actually own the physical copy of a game.

Hopefully we won't see hackers in multiplayer games because of this, we know how easy it is to play backups online on Nintendo's systems without getting banned.

Also i support nintendo, i own quite a few 3DS games.

[GiantFriendlyCrab]

jokes are on these hackers, wii u has no games

[TemplarDante]

Ha ha, jokes on you Pirate, bastard!
Theres no games to pirate ;)

[miyamoto]

"Nintendo Wii U Hacked; This is the Real Reason Next-Gen Implements DRM"?

NO!

PS3 did not need this crap because Sony did their homework and invested millions on anti piracy and they succeeded: a first in console gaming! reason why devs and pubs flock to PS3 coz they knew they can have good ROI on PS3. pretty sure they will improve this on PS4.

Nintendo has been in this business longer than Sony and they did not have the will to combat piracy given their billions. How can lawyers combat anonymous hackers, Iwata?

Worse is M$, biggest software company in the world, if they had the will to combat piracy they could at least done it for xbox if not the PC.

[ps3_pwns]

this is what happens when you are behind in the times nintendo. you get hacked to pieces. im just waiting for 3ds to be hacked right before pokemon x/y so you get a lot of crap fakes and hack pokes on the gts lol.

[uuaschbaer]

Masochistic bollocks. DRM exists to sell you things you already own for the n-th time, to take away your right to sell your own things and to suggest that piracy is a problem, because every time someone implements DRM some moron like this will start on his holier-than-thou tirade and politicians will assume that where there is smoke there is fire and start funnelling money to people who do not own it.

[josephayal]

EVERY game must be always on

[stubbed_out]

Can't say I agree with the practice but this could help sales of hardware in Asia. Same (OK tiny bit higher for the chip implementation) price console with cheaper/free games, a win for many potential customers.

[contradictory]

@-GametimeUK-

i couldn't agree more
there were some NDS games on the nearby marketplace
and the price for SMB64 was 40€....
that's insane. it was the first game i bought for my first NDS when NDS was released...

meanwhile Skyrim is at 30€ at the same store...
something's not right here...

and if you want to really go into depths
i can buy most 2-3 year old PS3/X360/PC games
at 20€-30€

[7uff1]

Why can't people just buy the console and it's games?

[o-Sunny-o]

Wii only had a handful of games so it wasn't worth modding. I bought games like Zelda Skyward Sword from the store.

[Shnazzyone]

It's not really hacked, this thing just plays wii games in the wii mode. The wii u side is not comprimised.... almost makes me wanna add homebrew to the wii side... but why risk it?