731On Why Chip Modding Adds Value to Games Consoles
posted on January 22nd, 2010
All through the history of computer games, people have loved to subvert and modify games and also the hardware systems they’re run on. Right from the classic POKE hacks on the Spectrum giving you unlimited lives on Night Lore way back in the 1980s, to Nintendo Wii Modchips permitting one to play a wider range of apps on their Nintendo Wii.
Console developers and games makers have had an uncertain relationship with the hacking and soldering crowd. In one way, they add extra value to the systems and games - for example chips that have been modified give great convenience to gamers who can download non-sanctioned games from the internet. Similarly, software hacks breathe new life into very-hard-to-complete games, and nowadays it’s even de rigeur for games developers to embed cheat codes for games players to seek out.
But to balance that out, games developers opine that such chip modification lessens their revenue, as chip modifications are also utilized to short-circuit piracy measures, and bypassing hardware that restricts cartridges to play just in particular geographical locations. These are persuasive grounds for hardware and games producers to forever add progressive measures to make chipmods all that more dificult.
However, no matter how persuasive the grounds are in opposition to modifying chips, chip modification is now a burgeoning industry that isn’t going to go away.
