I’m worried about the future of console modding

I grew up modding consoles and handhelds. The Nintendo DS, the Wii, the 3DS, the PSP, and the PS2 are all devices that I modded at some point or another for homebrew, custom software, and other things. I have a Nintendo Switch that I modded as well, but nowadays, console modding is increasingly becoming more and more difficult, to the point that I’m getting worried about the future of console modding, what that may look like, and the ramifications it can have.

Software updates, bug bounties, and closed ecosystems

There are so many incentives against releasing exploits

Times are very very different now from the early 2000s to early 2010s. Back then, companies were near-powerless to prevent the onslaught of console modders, with the PlayStation 2, the original Xbox, and the Nintendo Wii all being blown wide-open by hackers quite early in their lifespans. The Xbox 360 improved things somewhat for Microsoft thanks to its Hyper-V hypervisor, which it had deployed in servers for a decade at that point, but it was still susceptible to hardware attacks, and the PlayStation 3 eventually completely broke down as well.

However, signs of slowing down came about with that and the subsequent generation. With software updates that could patch security holes, my first experience of that was with the Nintendo 3DS. I remember firmware version 4.5 being the version to stay on if you wanted to mod your Nintendo 3DS, but no information came out on how to do that until the following year. Eventually, piracy group Gateway released the Gateway 3DS flashcard, and other developers followed suit and released their own exploits after reverse engineering the work that Gateway had done, only they focused their efforts on homebrew rather than piracy.

Nowadays, exploits are even rarer. Between improvements in security and closed ecosystems, alongside bug bounties, it’s harder and harder to break into a console. Why would developers release their exploits to the public when they could get a huge chunk of money from the likes of Sony instead? Not only that, because of software updates, those exploits will be patched instantly. Would you rather get a huge chunk of money for your work, or release it and the exploit get patched within days? Most developers nowadays will choose the former, and who can blame them?

What about game preservation?

The Wii U and 3DS eShop shutdowns worry me

Game preservation is becoming an increasingly relevant topic, especially in a digital age where games are purchased online and downloaded, rather than being available exclusively on physical media. Physical media can be preserved and resold, whereas digital media tends to be tied to an account at the very least, if not the actual console itself. With the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U, both devices were blown open enough that the shutdown of the eShop wasn’t too detrimental, as those online stores had been entirely backed up by enthusiasts.

However, in the case of other consoles and handhelds, it’s hard to say that the shutting down of those services won’t cause problems in the future. Even if those services are backed up, there’s no guarantee those consoles will be easily moddable in the future so that people can install those games and play them when those stores shut down. For obscure indie classics or digital-only releases, there is no alternative aside from piracy. At that point, when there’s no alternative and no way to play those games legally, is it really piracy? I would argue that it isn’t, and I imagine plenty of others would, too.

As an example of lost media that still can’t be found to this day in a completely playable state, Lord of the Rings: Conquest saw the release of two DLC packs for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, though they were taken down after Pandemic Studios went under in 2010. Nobody has been able to find both of those DLC packs in a playable form, and there’s no alternative available for other consoles, either.

While you could argue that people are more aware than ever that digital game preservation is important, even if people back up that content, there’s no guarantee it’ll ever be playable. The PlayStation 5‘s PlayStation Store could shut down in a decade with the latest version of the firmware still being unhackable. Even if the entire PlayStation Store were backed up, there would be no guarantee that fans of the company could install those titles and play them, despite there being no alternatives as there would be no “legal” way to play many exclusive titles.

That’s without getting into updates for games, either. Plenty of games on consoles nowadays are released as a physical copy where the physical copy still requires updates once you insert the disc. Even if the games will play as-is in the distant future, I can’t imagine those updates will be easy to install if those servers ever shut down. Nintendo made this statement when it shut down the eShop, but I can’t imagine that this will extend past the end of this decade.

Even after March 27, 2023, and for the foreseeable future, it will still be possible to redownload games and DLC and receive software updates on Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems.

As a result, we need to look to the far future of consoles, and that’s what worries me about console modding the most. If we have lost media from the 2010s, an era when hacking consoles was significantly easier than it is now, then I can’t imagine that the situation will improve by much when we look back to the 2020s.

What can we do about it?

Not much, to be honest

Really, there isn’t a huge amount that we can do, aside from continuing to buy physical copies of games when we can. These are the only copies of games that you can guarantee will survive past an online cut-off date, but that still doesn’t account for updates or DLC. Still, it’s the best that you can get, and the situation of consoles becoming harder and harder to crack is a problem for people who care about being able to play digital titles long into the future.

To be clear, I’m not arguing in favor of piracy, but I am arguing in favor of a middle ground. Second-hand game sales are the same on a revenue sheet to the likes of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo as they are to piracy, in the sense that no money in either transaction (or “transaction”) will ever make it to the company that actually initially sold it. Surely there has to be a common-sense approach to digital-only game distribution that doesn’t just prevent those titles from ever being played again whenever the company behind either the game or the console decides to close up shop.

As it stands, consoles are starting to go down a very weird path that I’m not necessarily a fan of. A digital-only future seems inevitable, but that by itself can cause a huge amount of problems for game preservationists, especially given that digital ownership isn’t real ownership. I’m becoming increasingly worried that console modding going out of vogue will cause lasting damage to game preservation in the future, and I think we’re already starting to see its effects, potentially years in advance of when it will truly become a problem.