Nintendo vs. hackers: The cat & mouse game commences
May 25 Carl Nelson
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It was inevitable; as soon as the Wii launched, several mod chips started appearing, allowing the console to play burned discs. Nintendo, always ready for a fight, has apparently introduced a new hardware revision of the Wii already. So far, only some NTSC-J region consoles are affected. The original blog report cites a forum post, but for some reason they do not link to that post. They do quote it though:
It is a latest news from a shop in 188. The latest lots of Wii NTSC-J can’t be modded. Why? It’s because 3-pins are physically cut from a surface-mounted IC. There are still some Wii NTSC-J unaffected in 188 and Golden, but price will go up soon once this news spreads out and everyone is struggling to be the last one to have it. So hurry if you have not gotten one yourself yet. Of course, if you only play legitimate games, then it doesn’t bother you anyway.
Luckily, Wii NTSC-U is not affected yet.
188 and Golden are two video game/computer malls in Hong Kong, so I’m not sure if this refers to NTSC-J consoles intended for the Hong Kong market only (where admittedly, a lot of game piracy takes place) or if they are talking about NTSC-J consoles for the Japanese market which are imported into Hong Kong (the Wii was only just released in Hong Kong recently).
In any case, if this is true, it is sure to spread to other regions as well.
Score: Pirates: 1 Nintendo: 1
Filed under: Video Game Hardware
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