For example, in Jester's memory.

In the next generation, that is, the generation in the original history, when PS first came out.

What was the crack like at that time?

By this time, as the difficulty of cracking continued to increase, it was difficult to do anything from the game storage medium, so the masters turned to attack the console itself. For example, Playstation and later PS2, XBOX and other consoles of the same era can be cracked by the "direct reading method". The so-called direct reading is to install a chip on the host computer to make it skip the genuine detection and successfully read the pirated disc. Of course, soldering a direct reading chip is not something that every player can do independently.

At this time, players who generally play cracking machines will go to the store to buy the console that the store has cracked for you.

Of course, after Jester knew about this, could he have prevented it in advance?

Prevention is a way to prevent this, but it is impossible to store hardware without vulnerabilities, as long as the cracker wants to crack it, who knows what more bizarre means they can come up with?

Moreover, even if you want to prevent it, it is not so easy.

In this era, at least in the next generation, it is not possible to carry out means such as online verification.

IN ADDITION, EVEN THE HANDHELD HAS NOT ESCAPED THE FATE OF BEING CRACKED, OF COURSE, AT LEAST FOR NOW, ACCORDING TO JESTER, HE LEARNED THAT HIS GAMEBOY HAS NOT BEEN CRACKED, BECAUSE HE THOUGHT OF SOME REASONS WHY NINTENDO'S HANDHELD WAS CRACKED, SO HE PREVENTED IT IN ADVANCE.

THIS METHOD OF CRACKING THE FLASHCARD IS SUITABLE FOR ALMOST ALL NINTENDO'S CONSOLES, FROM THE ORIGINAL HISTORICAL GAMEBOY TO THE LATER NDS, IT CAN BE CRACKED WITH THIS METHOD.

It doesn't make a difference whether it's directly or indirectly.

And why is this approach so powerful? It's very simple, because the flashcard is actually a blank cassette that can be erased, and players can download the relevant game number from the Internet, and then write it into the cassette and make it run, which makes the game resources completely free! In order to eliminate flashcards, Nintendo has strengthened NDS encryption measures, but players can still use guò to flash or use the boot card to circumvent it.

That said, for Nintendo, as long as their essential means of storage remain the same, it is almost inevitable that they will be hacked in this way.

In fact, Jester is also thinking about this question now.

Nintendo is going to announce their handheld device at E3, although it is said that Jester doesn't care much about this matter, but it is not realistic to have no opinion at all, and Jester is now thinking if Nintendo still uses the same kind of technology as it is in history.

So did he use this cracking method to yin the other party first?

Jester is not worried about the question of whether it is insidious or not, but he is worried that after being known, the impact on his reputation will be too great, and as the president of the World Video Game Association, it is too shameful and too inferior to use such means on his own members.

Soon, Jester put this matter on the back of his mind for the time being, and he recalled some of the things about the game history that some game consoles were cracked.

The ones that Jester recalled before were called hard solutions.

However, with the passage of time, due to the re-strengthening of preventive measures, there is little hope of successfully cracking on the hardware, so the masters turn to the host system and other software, that is, "soft solution".

Of course, it is too early to prevent soft desolation, because the current host does not even have a system, and there is no basis for soft decoupling.

But this does not prevent it, first refer to the cracking ideas of those cracking masters in later generations, and carry out targeted desires, so how did you do it with soft solution?

From what Jester remembered to learn.

As early as the XBOX era, the soft decoding of the system was realized, and even the operation of the self-made system was realized, but at that time, some changes were still to be made to the motherboard and other hardware. In terms of soft solution, the master at that time took advantage of the save vulnerability of the game "007: Nightfire" to flash the firmware and system of XBOX, so as to crack it; The self-made system is even more powerful, not only able to run games on hard disks, but also to run various emulators and self-made software, etc., which can be described as extremely powerful.

Later, console manufacturers looked to system upgrades to patch vulnerabilities and reduce the likelihood of cracking.

However, any system has zài vulnerabilities, from PSP to Wii, Xbox360 and PS3, which have been hacked, allowing these consoles to run pirated games, homebrew programs, etc., and even flash homebrew systems. For example, after hackers break the encryption method of PS3, players no longer need to modify the machine or brush the machine by themselves, so they can get stronger gameplay and play richer game resources.

All this information flashed through Jester's mind one by one, and then slowly thought about some ways to deal with it.

Of course, crackers are masters, and developers spend a lot of money to raise it naturally, and the host manufacturers who have suffered from piracy and cracking will definitely not see their interests damaged in vain, so various preventive measures have been introduced.

For example, in order to prevent the cracking of the storage medium, Sega DC used a special format of GDrom, Nintendo NGC used an alternative size MiniDVD, Sony designed the most special UMD storage medium for PSP, and PS2 used DVD, which was not popular at the time.

And even more ruthless is Microsoft, which deserves to be wealthy.

How do they do it?

They simply replaced it with a new optical drive, which was done so that the computer optical drive could not recognize these specialized game discs, so as to prevent the software from being read out and cracked.

In addition to these independent measures on these hardware, manufacturers will also take measures in software to further maintain the original game, including the aforementioned system updates, and Sony, in order to avoid the aforementioned PS4 almost cracked incident, has patched the vulnerabilities in version 1.76 of the PS4 system through guò 2.00 firmware upgrade.

Console manufacturers can also work with game developers to encrypt their works and other restrictions, such as piracy cannot be connected to the Internet to participate in multiplayer mode; Other measures include the formulation of mandatory policies, such as the announcement of the XboxOne, Microsoft proudly announced a series of policies such as DRM (content digital rights encryption protection technology), and other areas locking.

Of course, some game developers don't always use DRM to prevent piracy.

For example, CDPR's The Witcher 3, they don't encrypt the game, and the game doesn't have any internet-connected content, so for PC players, there is basically no difference between the full version and playing pirated.

But so.

CDPR also said that the reason why there is a game called The Witcher 3 is because there is a console, and if there was no console, this game would not have appeared? Why? It's because PC players alone can't get enough profitable sales.

And CDPR when they were developing The Witcher 3, they were in a ruin.

But Jester also knows that there are disadvantages to using these independent and special anti-theft methods, and there are no perfect things in the world, and with the convenience of one side, there will naturally be inconvenience on the other.

For example.

First of all, the most straightforward thing is that manufacturers will design various precautions, which drives up the cost of hardware and causes inconvenience to use. For example, the use of "non-mainstream" storage media will undoubtedly lead to an increase in manufacturing costs, and the applicability will also be greatly reduced; And various restrictions such as Internet connection have also made the complexity of the game not decrease, but also increased. Unfortunately, this backlash is probably unaware to many players.

But the biggest danger to solve the problem is to dampen the enthusiasm of game developers, such as the decline of PSP is largely due to the discouragement of developers.

According to statistics in 2009, although PSP sold 46 million units, due to the storage of pirated versions, there were only 26 games with more than one million sales on the platform, which can be described as the game console with the worst soft-hard sales ratio; However, the enthusiasm of the developers was severely frustrated when the game could not be sold, and few new games were launched on the PSP later.

The escape of the developers, the guide zhì players can not continue to play good works.

In fact, Jester also came from pirated players at the beginning, whether it is a PC game or a console game, it all starts with cracking, after all, domestic players of his age are games that they have been exposed to since the era of the little overlord.

Later, when Jester entered the PS2 era, when he felt that he could finally buy a console of his own, he went to buy a cracked one.

I think I'm driving sales for console manufacturers.

As everyone knows, this is not necessarily a good thing for console manufacturers, because selling more consoles (hardware), manufacturers may not be able to make profits, and even lose more - everyone knows that home consoles mainly rely on game works to make money, and hardware losses are possible, and cracking undoubtedly cuts off an important source of income for console manufacturers, and the risk of eventual bankruptcy is difficult to say.

For example, the later Sony's PS3 was selling hardware at a loss, and PS4 must not be able to make any money.

To be honest, when Jester officially became a supporter of the genuine version, it was because of the torture of a sentence, if Sony is really bankrupt, will there be "PS5" and its studio's excellent games in the future? You know, Sony's life was also very difficult later.

Just as he was thinking about it, Carmack's time was over, and it was Jester's turn.

Jester's assistant whispered something in his ear, and Jester came back to his senses from his previous musings. R1152