Given they can't seem to have a loader, I know they have to somehow trigger the Switch to know there's another game - but can you imagine having to do that several times to cycle to the game you want? The cost needed to repair the cartridge slot after too many pushes is definitely going to outweigh having just bought a Steam Deck and emulated the Switch instead.
I can imagine plenty of people will start(have been) dumping rental carts from ie. the library.
If those dumps loaded onto the mig are indistinguishable from the original and Nintendo starts banning those, they risk banning a lot of other legitimate players who also rented and played on those carts.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it didn't use to be an issue to Nintendo because you had to install the xci and that was detectable. Now you can run the game off the cart directly.
The MIG uses its own IDs from what I understand, and if they're invalid (randomly generated) or used by others (not random and used by other MIG users) Nintendo will know, autodetect, and ban you
Ah okay so I guess the mig can't spoof ids. Then in any case it's probably only a matter of time the console gets banned if it ever reaches the internet, which is worse than modding because now you have no way of updating the firmware for future games.
I do wonder if they'll check if you have played a game via the MIG offline then go online later with a legit game, I don't think they do currently but with the existence of the MIG I am certain Nintendo will make that happen with an update.
To be fair, once your console gets banned you can get the firm upgrades pretty much freely from the Archives and won't have to ever worry about any kind of "desync" that could Alert the Mothership.
How would you install the firmware that you obtained from the Archives tho? Remember that the console for all intents and purposes is unmodded so Daybreak is not an option.
Unlike previous handheld generations, system firmwares are no longer embedded into the game carts either so while a game can require a newer firmware, it does not come with an option to update offline afaik
How would you install the firmware that you obtained from the Archives tho?
Fair point. To be also fair I'd consider that anyone who is considering still mainlining a Switch in 202X and would be any interested in a flashcart, it would be because their system is already modded.
Unlike previous handheld generations, system firmwares are no longer embedded into the game carts either so while a game can require a newer firmware, it does not come with an option to update offline afaik
I might be remembering wrong but I've found formware upgrades in carts such as FE3H and New Pokémon Snap. It's not like they're that heavy, so they can easily be added as payload to the cart.
Fair point. To be also fair I'd consider that anyone who is considering still mainlining a Switch in 202X and would be any interested in a flashcart, it would be because their system is already modded.
Interesting point. Although quite the contrary, I'd think the flashcart mostly interests switch owners who didn't mod their console for whatever reason. Eg. OLED owners, cost of modchip install, lack of access to reputable installers, risk of physical damages, voiding warranty, hassle of juggling cfw updates, etc.
I'm not sure what you mean by mainlining a switch means, but I'm a fairly new switch owner myself(late 2022). I bought the OLED at a discount not knowing the high costs associated with modding specifically the OLED model. (At the time it was upwards of $300CAD for modchip and install, and there were plenty of horror stories of how finicky it was) Had a flashcart been available at the time, I'd buy that in a heartbeat instead.
For people who didn't mod and already own a library of games, a flashcart would've still been a cheap and good opportunity for people to discover new games they otherwise have missed or wouldn't have bought either way.
I might be remembering wrong but I've found formware upgrades in carts such as FE3H and New Pokémon Snap. It's not like they're that heavy, so they can easily be added as payload to the cart.
I haven't been able to find any resources online that suggest firmware is embedded onto the game carts at all. What you may have confused with is GAME UPDATES, which can be present on carts. The issue with your suggestion is two-fold:
By injecting a payload to the cart, you have to modify the game rom(xci) and thus invalidate the NCA signature. It is my educated guess(with no proof admittedly) that this is the reason that the switch failed to launch games when they tried to add updates and DLC onto the MIG. (OP's video mentioned this in an update).
Even if point one wasn't the case, the console does not know what to do with the firmware because there's no mechanism to update from an offline source to the best of my knowledge. Even the Switch's own maintenance mode requires internet connection to download a new firmware.
It does? That explains why in the video the person was able to play incomplete dumps after some tweaking. I know that on their website they recommend you create a full backup that includes multiple cartridge-specific identifiers if you want to use "online mode". From my limited outsider perspective I'd always assumed these were required to be present for the Switch to even recognize something was in the slot, as the slot uses a seperate circuit and chip to ensure validity before passing it through to the Switch. I never thought of the possibility of them including a (currently) valid ID for you!
Unless the developers have managed to obtain an official private key from some publisher in order to digitally sign their certificates, this thing really isn't gonna survive long, is it? Nintendo could ban the cert (or, if it's bogus, enforce stricter verification) and/or flag everyone using it (maybe even retroactively?). Why would they even make it have an identifier in the first place, since they already want you to provide your own and all it does is give Nintendo something to ban?
If I were to get my hands on one of these, I probably wouldn't put too many games on there, maybe just one or two that I'm adamant on playing at the time.
I do have some low capacity micro SDs scattered at home as well that should barely be large enough to house a single switch game. So worst case scenario, I could also just pop the cart out, swap the micro SD, and plug it back in to only require a single insertion.
Granted, this might not be feasible for people who just want to use the migswitch as a backup tool to put all their legal games on one cart, but for pirates like myself I'd consider it only a minor setback.
Not to mention the cartridge slot probably being designed to last a lot of insertions before failing