Modchips and Consoles: What Are the Benefits of Modding?
Sunday, February 28th, 2010Since the first video games consoles 30 years ago, people have been compelled to subvert and hack the game code and also the systems they’re run on. Right from the game hacks on the ZX Spectrum handing you invincibility on Hypersports way back in the 1980s, to Nintendo DS Lite flashcarts allowing one to run a broader range of apps on their Nintendo.
Games makers and system producers have had a tricky relationship with gamers and modders who are frequently are all part of the same crowd. In a sense, they bring more worth to the systems and games – for instance chips that have been modified give great convenience to gamers who can download non-sanctioned games from the internet. Similarly, software hacks adds new purpose very challenging games, and nowadays it’s even a convention for games makers to actually secretly plant “easter egg” cheats for games players to discover.
On the other hand, games developers state that this kind of chip modification lessens their revenue, as chip modifications are also utilized to get around measures to try and prevent illegal copying, and short-circuiting hardware that fixes cartridges to play only in certain countries. These are persuasive reasons for console and software developers to forever develop progressive steps to make chipmods more and more tricky.
Yet, no matter how powerful the causes are against chip modification, chip modification is now a big market that isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.