Does this mean I'll be able to pick up a good clone in Shenzhen next year? Serious question.
Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
151–160 of 220 posts
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
With many companies easing into open source recently, we have seen that just isn't true. If we're still trying to spread the idea that the community is dumb and is going to ruin everything and will remove value from the product if they get access to the code, that assumption is going to be tested now regardless of what they do, and it probably will keep happening because the incentive for leakers and illegal aftermar…
"Not gaining something from it" != "Afraid to do it" The decision to open source is not as dichromatic as it might seem. In between the "yes we want to open source" and "no we don't" there is a huge chasm of "IDGAF".
That chasm is also occupied by others such as these subcontractors who are careless with security policies and end up causing the leaks. Is that the space they want to stay in? I don't think it is. And if they decide to move towards any direction, I hope it's the "yes we want to open source" direction so that the leakers don't have anything to go after anymore. They may even become good open source citizens in the end.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#153The irony is that N64 got leaked and not Saturn, Jaguar or some console where the owner isn't continually exploiting the IP in some fashion...
Its not irony, its certainly going to be based on interest. People (hackers and non-hackers) are going to be more interested in the more popular IP. More people owned Nintendo products than the other brands. More interest leads to bigger target.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Not gaining something from it" != "Afraid to do it" The decision to open source is not as dichromatic as it might seem. In between the "yes we want to open source" and "no we don't" there is a huge chasm of "IDGAF".
That chasm is also occupied by others such as these subcontractors who are careless with security policies and end up causing the leaks. Is that the space they want to stay in? I don't think it is. And if they decide to move towards any direction, I hope it's the "yes we want to open source" direction so that the leakers don't have anything to go after anymore. They may even become good open source citizens in the en…
I don't think that's a relevant part of the consideration process. Open source is not a security strategy. Breaches happen at companies who open source their software too.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#155Does this mean I'll be able to pick up a good clone in Shenzhen next year? Serious question.
I doubt it. Refurbishing and selling original hardware is still likely to be much cheaper than the engineering effort required to build one from scratch.
The Wii is old enough that modern commodity hardware can emulate it well enough that it almost indistinguishable from running games on the actual device. Wii clones already exist as emulator boxes and that will continue to be the most financially sound way of producing clones.
If this leak were to include design specifications of more modern hardware (such as in the Switch) I think you _would_ see some good clones in Shenzhen in less than a year.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have zero experience in the video game industry, but I'd think that since video games get ~zero attention after they're shipped, writing maintainable code is less of a priority. I'd be really curious to see how the Pokemon Red/Blue split was done. Is it a C precompiler flag? Build config? Actual config? Cloned repo?
In the old days that was probably more true than it is today, since so many games are "as a service" now with shared engines, online platforms, continual updates/patches, tons of expansions and DLC, supporting mods, etc. The downside is that we'll never really be able to play today's games nostalgically like we can with old burned-to-ROM games. Online multiplayer games have a shelf life of sorts that depends on the s…
After MSN Gaming Zone died in 2006, the Age of Empires II community developed a multitude of alternatives to play the game online (with a rating ladder). The one that was the most widely used up to the very recent release by MS of AoE2:DE on Steam was Voobly, which exists since 2008, although back then it was called IGZones.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#157Modern Vintage Gamer just released a video [0] discussing this leak in greater detail along with its expected implications. Anyone who's curious can find the download links by backtracking through all the Pokemon Prototype General threads under the Pokemon board on 4chan. One of the leaks that caught my attention was the source for Pokemon Blue, partially because of nostalgia and partially out of curiosity to see wha…
I'm really excited by the Pokemon leak. The game was so large and detailed yet the resulting output so incredibly tiny. The developers implemented so many tricks to keep the size down. Now you can see what they did and how it worked. This could be really historically important.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#158To be clear, this doesn't just contain the source code of the software. It also contains the Verilog for the N64 GPU and other important hardware component, which is hugely important. From what I gather, it also contains full version history from their VCS. While it is very interesting, it's worth noting that anybody hoping to use this for anything "serious" risks getting the Nintendo lawyers on their ass. Emulators…
I'm betting the emulators will use this. They develop against the ROMs without permission too, after all. Of course they won't incorporate unlicensed copyrighted things from the leak in their own code, but they don't need to.
Every emulator will tell you to acquire your ROMs legally.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If one of your engineers has to download and study the leaked source code, they've infringed Nintendo's copyrights. Is this an accurate interpretation of copyright law? I thought copyright was meant to prevent books from being copied, not to prevent books from being read.
I'm quite confident it's accurate. Downloading is copying. Downloading leaked proprietary source-code infringes the copyrights of the holder. That's as it should be. If you download a commercial ebook from BitTorrent without having paid for a licence, that's copyright infringement. Nintendo chooses not to put its source-code on the market, so you have no means of acquiring a licence to it. Downloading their copyright…
Not exactly. Copyright covers redistribution, not viewing someone else's illegal copy. That's why you can get a DMCA notice or copyright strike for uploading, torrenting, or hosting copyright works but not for downloading them. (Why torrenting? See below)
When you get sent a DMCA or copyright strike for torrenting movies, their legal basis isn't that you downloaded the content but that you then seeded it to peers. This is also why Popcorn Time etc. (can) generate strikes, because you also serve as a seed and redistribute content to other users.
Otherwise, the MPAA would have a field day with this and strike anyone who used an illegal streaming site. Watched a leak on Dailymotion? Strike one. Watched a clip of a show on an unofficial YouTube channel? Strike two. etc.
Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
That chasm is also occupied by others such as these subcontractors who are careless with security policies and end up causing the leaks. Is that the space they want to stay in? I don't think it is. And if they decide to move towards any direction, I hope it's the "yes we want to open source" direction so that the leakers don't have anything to go after anymore. They may even become good open source citizens in the en…
I don't think that's a relevant part of the consideration process. Open source is not a security strategy. Breaches happen at companies who open source their software too.
You are correct that it's not a security strategy by itself. But it can be part of a larger overall security strategy.