It has been 7 years since the Nintendo Switch first went on sale in 2017. According to the normal life cycle of most game consoles, the Switch is close to retirement. Correspondingly, the leaks related to Switch 2 are becoming clearer.
Recently, the latest news from game accessory manufacturers is that the Switch 2 will use a magnetic Joy-Con, and more importantly, it will be compatible with the cartridges of the original Switch. This is undoubtedly good news for those who have a large number of Switch cartridges, which will greatly reduce the cost of purchasing game content after buying a new Switch.
However, the physical game media model represented by cassettes and discs, which Nintendo continues to adhere to, has suffered a blow under the interference of cracking, piracy and other factors. At present, some hackers have cracked the technical mechanism of the Switch cassette, and they have also publicly sold the "flashcard" device. In addition to fanning the flames of piracy, this action also challenges the physical disc mode in the game console space, and Nintendo is facing a dilemma "cassette crisis".
The new machine is compatible with the old cartridge, and the old players are relieved?
According to the leaks, the Switch 2 will be officially released in 2025. Regarding its specific configuration, it is now almost certain that the Switch 2 will use a more powerful chip, which will still be built by Nvidia, and the game performance is expected to reach the level of PS4. In other words, the Switch 2 is still not going the high-performance route, and compared to the PS5 and Microsoft's latest Xbox consoles, its gaming performance is obviously not enough.
However, as a handheld machine, especially compared to the existing Switch, this performance improvement is quite large. In addition, the screen equipped with the Switch 2 will also be upgraded, the size will be increased from 7 inches to 8 inches, and the resolution will be changed from 720P to 1080P. The Joy-con of the Switch 2 is larger, and the way it connects to the body has been changed from a slide rail to a magnetic one, which can theoretically avoid the wear and tear of the old model, but it is doubtful whether the stability will be reduced.
Overall, the upgrade of the Switch 2 seems to be more conventional, and the basic form of the old Switch handheld console 2-in-1 has not changed. Of course, the most important thing is that it will be compatible with the cartridges of the old Switch. This is certainly good news for players, especially veteran players.
First of all, since the original Switch was released in 2017, Nintendo has released a large number of games in the past seven years, many of which have physical cartridges. Since the Switch 2 can inherit the game lineup of the old Switch, there is no need to worry about the amount of game content at the beginning of the Switch 2's release.
Secondly, many users choose to buy the cassette version instead of the digital version of the game, and a big reason is that the cassette can regain blood. Many people sell cartridges back to blood after the game is cleared, and after a benign second-hand cartridge market is formed, players can greatly reduce the cost of playing the game by buying and selling second-hand cartridges. In this way, even the Switch 2 that has just been sold can allow players to obtain game resources at a low cost, which is naturally beneficial to the early sales of the Switch 2.
(Source: Produced by Lei Technology)
However, the old Switch does not support the cartridge of the Switch 2. In other words, many of the escort masterpieces that Nintendo has prepared for Switch 2 in the future, and even the new games that will be launched in the future, are very likely to be no longer compatible with older consoles. Of course, there may be two versions of cartridges for some new titles at the beginning, but there is a high probability that the compatibility with older consoles will be gradually abandoned in the later stage.
This situation is actually very common in the console world, in the case of Sony, the PS5 can be compatible with PS4 game discs, but PS4 cannot use PS5 discs. The compatibility of the new console with the previous generation of consoles is a very good behavior, which can not only drive the sales of the new console, but also solve the problem of game content for players, so that the transition from the old console to the new console becomes painless and smooth.
In this way, the fact that the Switch 2 is compatible with the old Switch is not uncommon in the gaming industry. However, this time it is more special that the Switch cartridge is facing the danger of being cracked, which is not a good thing for Nintendo and many players.
Flashcards turn players into "genuine victims"
The crisis encountered by the Switch cartridge is specifically the emergence of a thing called "Mig Swicth" on the market, which can play cracked games on the Switch in a way that simulates the insertion and removal of the cartridge. Behind the Mig Switch, it is controlled and operated by a group of hackers.
In the case of the Switch cartridge being cracked, simply put, a hacker has been able to copy the cartridge released by Nintendo to the copycat cartridge intact, and then this copycat cartridge can fool Nintendo's verification mechanism and disguise it as a genuine cartridge, so as to successfully run it on the Switch. What's more special is that this copycat cassette looks similar in appearance and volume as the genuine cassette, but it actually contains a TF card. That is, it can cram a lot of game content into a single copycat cartridge, and they will all be misjudged by the Switch as genuine games.
（图源：Mig Switch）
Some people may be curious: Switch has not been cracked a long time ago, why is it so difficult to crack the cassette?
Indeed, the Switch was cracked a few years ago, and even Android can be installed. However, the cracking of the Switch itself is more complicated, it needs to disassemble the machine and solder a cracking chip on the motherboard, which has high requirements for hands-on ability. Moreover, after the hardware is successfully cracked, users can also install a third-party system (that is, the "atmosphere" launched by hackers) on the cracked version of the Switch. At the same time, using the cracked version of the Switch to play cracked games basically means that there is no chance with Nintendo's regular networking service, and once it is officially monitored by Nintendo, it will be banned immediately.
Moreover, for Team Xecuter, the hard-breaking team of Switch, which is the most vocificent, Nintendo's legal department chose to strike hard and arrested its core personnel in conjunction with the judicial department. Gary Bowser, who was in charge of the operation of the hack website and the sale of hacking tools, was sentenced to 40 months in prison and had to pay Nintendo $14.5 million in compensation. The imprisonment of Team Xecuter's team members has undoubtedly dealt a huge blow to Switch's hard breaking industry chain. It is worth mentioning that in 2020, under the application of Tencent, the Guangzhou court issued an injunction for the first batch of Nintendo Switch cracked cases in China, prohibiting the sale of cracked Switch.
(Source: X)
In general, cracking the Switch itself is more expensive, the experience after cracking is worse, and it will face higher legal risks. But this is not the case with Mig Swicth, which only involves cracking copies of cassettes without cracking the Switch machine, which is more subtle.
What's more, it can be a nuisance for genuine players. According to Mig Swicth's technical mechanism, once a genuine cassette is copied, two or more cassettes with the same genuine ID will appear on the market. Under the existing cassette verification mechanism of the Switch, Nintendo can't tell which cassette is "Li Kui" and which cassette is "Li Ghost", if there are two "identical" cassettes connected to the Internet at the same time, then who should the official release and ban the machine to?
To put it bluntly, the early cracked version of Switch is only used by a small number of people, and they don't have much intersection with the genuine player base, and it is unlikely to affect the normal play of genuine players. But the problems posed by Mig Swicth are even more problematic and can be a huge blow to genuine cassette, especially second-hand cassette. From the perspective of genuine players, when they buy a second-hand cartridge, they have no way of knowing whether it has been copied, let alone how many imposter replicas are on the market.
The devastation wrought by Mig Swicth was devastating.
The strongest legal department can't solve all problems
Players ridiculed Nintendo for having "the strongest legal department in the Eastern Hemisphere", behind which is Nintendo's resolute and resolute attitude towards copyright infringement. Around the Switch cracking problem, in addition to putting Team Xecuter members in prison, Nintendo also made a complaint this year to kill the Switch emulator Yuzu, Yuzu emulator not only stopped changing, but the creator also paid $2.4 million in compensation. Theoretically, in the face of Mig Swicth's rampant behavior, Nintendo could once again wield the stick of law.
(Source: Yuzu official website)
However, this time it wasn't that simple. According to its official website, Mig Swicth is produced and sold in Russia. Moreover, some players said that the team behind Mig Swicth is likely to be Team Xecuter. And Nintendo has long since withdrawn from the Russian market, and if it wants to use a legal weapon against Mig Swicth, I am afraid it will be beyond the whip. For Nintendo, the top priority should be to close the loopholes exploited by Mig Swicth. It's just that Switch's cassettes have been on the market since 2017 as early as 2017, and there must be a large number of early second-hand cassettes circulating on the market. Even though Nintendo could upgrade the authentication mechanism on the new cartridge, it couldn't do anything about the old cartridge.
Of course, the cracking of game consoles and the prevalence of flashcards have never been new in the gaming field. Sony's PSP and Nintendo's 3DS all suffered from similar situations. It's just that when these things happened, the corresponding game console products had been withdrawn from the market, the life cycle had ended, and the negative impact was greatly reduced. Switch, which has been born for more than 7 years, has theoretically entered the end of its life cycle. With the release of the Switch 2 and the completion of the replacement of the old Switch, a series of problems caused by Mig Swicth will gradually be solved.
However, since the Switch 2 maintains compatibility with the old cartridges, there will still be a long time in the future where players will be worried about the risk of copying the cartridges. Moreover, as long as the physical medium of the game card disc exists for a long time, it will always face the risk of being cracked.
Compared to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are more willing to promote digital versions of games and subscriptions, gradually reducing the presence of game discs. For players, the biggest advantage of physical game media is that it can be regenerated and second-hand traded, turning buying games into renting games, so as to greatly reduce the cost of purchasing content. In this case, the subscription system promoted by the host manufacturer is essentially a lease system, and the player has the right to use it for a certain period of time instead of ownership. Compared with the purchase and sale of game cards, the subscription system is more convenient and efficient, and it can also avoid the risk of cracking.
Perhaps, Nintendo and the next generation of Switch can consider using new ideas to solve this old and difficult problem.
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