It is likely they have the ability to sign the public key of your console with a “Suicide Key” which would signal your console to commit suicide by burning some internal e-fuse.
It is also equally likely this is an over-broad version of “Legal Rear Armor” that means nothing explicitly about what they can do. This is because modifying your system has long carried risk of bricking and their security systems to prevent modifications have only increased in strength.
It’s likely the new security system in the Switch 2 is so naively hair-trigger sensitive that it absolutely will brick you or disable some functionality permanently if it thinks you even so much as modified a backup copy of a save file or encrypted binary stored on your SD card itself. It’s very likely that any kind of attempt to write invalid foreign files onto an SD may result in issues. I’d expect Switch 2 systems to spontaneously self destruct if exposed to bad quality or fake SD cards with insufficient capacity; or an SD card that is failing if what I am guessing is true.
Is this confirmed? No; it’s just idle wild speculation. But it is what I expect from Nintendo; given that their creatives have all been driven away from the executive positions of power and only money driven executives are left at the helm.
Given that the Switch has already been thoroughly cracked; it’s likely now more than a want or need, Nintendo now has a mania or obsession with making their consoles un-exploitable. Likely, this is because they’re too naive to avoid promising their consoles are ‘unbreakable’ to their third parties and publishers.
Unfortunately Nintendo is full of foolish pride and stubbornness. Tinkerers and video game preservers the world over will need to once again break the Switch 2 security to pieces to prove to Nintendo that this endeavor is futile.
In the meantime; don’t tinker with a Switch or Switch 2 you can’t afford to lose. Hell, don’t even buy one if you’re sensitive to it being un-tinkerable. Don’t gift them to any children in your life either. Instead; gift them something more useful; like teaching them how to emulate one of the older Nintendo Systems and gift them a Library of ROMs so they don’t have to torrent it themselves and ‘give the family computer a virus’ or ‘cause a scary letter to be sent to their parents’ with their inexperience. If you can’t bear piracy; then go pick up one of the old legitimate retro systems. Buy it somewhere used and pick up whatever used games you can for them at any occasion.
I agree with it probably just being preemptive legal defence. Even their current used solution, being fully locked out of the Nintendo servers, is probably enough to be seen as “rendering a console partly or fully useless” should it ever need to be litigated in court. Especially with so many games and functions being online, digital or card key only.
But I really doubt the ‘burning an internal e-fuse’ idea. Mostly because they can already achieve enough in online service and software alone that they wouldn’t need such a fragile solution. They would really shoot themselves in the foot if they did. They would have way too little control over it themselves. A sudden swath of consoles bricking on a hot day would give them a bigger headache than the Joycon drift issue ever did. If not in the US, most definitely in the EU.
It is likely they have the ability to sign the public key of your console with a “Suicide Key” which would signal your console to commit suicide by burning some internal e-fuse.
It is also equally likely this is an over-broad version of “Legal Rear Armor” that means nothing explicitly about what they can do. This is because modifying your system has long carried risk of bricking and their security systems to prevent modifications have only increased in strength.
It’s likely the new security system in the Switch 2 is so naively hair-trigger sensitive that it absolutely will brick you or disable some functionality permanently if it thinks you even so much as modified a backup copy of a save file or encrypted binary stored on your SD card itself. It’s very likely that any kind of attempt to write invalid foreign files onto an SD may result in issues. I’d expect Switch 2 systems to spontaneously self destruct if exposed to bad quality or fake SD cards with insufficient capacity; or an SD card that is failing if what I am guessing is true.
Is this confirmed? No; it’s just idle wild speculation. But it is what I expect from Nintendo; given that their creatives have all been driven away from the executive positions of power and only money driven executives are left at the helm.
Given that the Switch has already been thoroughly cracked; it’s likely now more than a want or need, Nintendo now has a mania or obsession with making their consoles un-exploitable. Likely, this is because they’re too naive to avoid promising their consoles are ‘unbreakable’ to their third parties and publishers.
Unfortunately Nintendo is full of foolish pride and stubbornness. Tinkerers and video game preservers the world over will need to once again break the Switch 2 security to pieces to prove to Nintendo that this endeavor is futile.
In the meantime; don’t tinker with a Switch or Switch 2 you can’t afford to lose. Hell, don’t even buy one if you’re sensitive to it being un-tinkerable. Don’t gift them to any children in your life either. Instead; gift them something more useful; like teaching them how to emulate one of the older Nintendo Systems and gift them a Library of ROMs so they don’t have to torrent it themselves and ‘give the family computer a virus’ or ‘cause a scary letter to be sent to their parents’ with their inexperience. If you can’t bear piracy; then go pick up one of the old legitimate retro systems. Buy it somewhere used and pick up whatever used games you can for them at any occasion.
I agree with it probably just being preemptive legal defence. Even their current used solution, being fully locked out of the Nintendo servers, is probably enough to be seen as “rendering a console partly or fully useless” should it ever need to be litigated in court. Especially with so many games and functions being online, digital or card key only.
But I really doubt the ‘burning an internal e-fuse’ idea. Mostly because they can already achieve enough in online service and software alone that they wouldn’t need such a fragile solution. They would really shoot themselves in the foot if they did. They would have way too little control over it themselves. A sudden swath of consoles bricking on a hot day would give them a bigger headache than the Joycon drift issue ever did. If not in the US, most definitely in the EU.