Eventually, I decided to write a minimalist Game Boy interpreting emulator, without support for custom mappers or sound, (and probably many inaccuracies). I called the project Cinoop.
Cinoop is written in C and is open source. It can be run on Windows, DS, GameCube, 3DS, Linux based OSes, PSP, and PS4.
Wow, I didn’t know PS4 was running homebrew. When did that happen?
PS4 runs Steam on Linux for that matter…
https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016
Both Sony and MS shot themselves in the foot this latest generation – their consoles are fundamentally just regular AMD64 PCs. Naturally, this will have by far the largest group of hackers available. At least in the previous gen, they relied on custom PowerPC systems that relatively few hackers would be familiar with. While it took almost forever to hack the previous gen consoles, this gen’s have been quickly hacked, as the parent post shows.
What if this is secretly what they want? Regain some cred with the hobbyist hackers to make the system more desirable.
These days, if you want to hack on something, like to run emulators and homebrew, just get a Pi and be done with it. (Or perhaps a Shield TV if you want something with more horsepower.) There’s really no reason to buy a console for that anymore. In fact, it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth, unless you have a lot of free time on your hands.
Hackers will hack on what they want to hack on, even if it is just to see if it is possible to hack on it.
There is way, way more that goes into a platform than just the CPU.
Of course there is, and in the latest gen consoles, most of it is still a PC. The ease of getting linux running on the PS4 demonstrates that aptly. And to people voting down my original post, I’m HAPPY they shot themselves in the foot. I’m a big proponent of homebrew on consoles, and have been for almost 20 years now. The whole shot themselves in the foot comment was looking at it from their point of view, not ours. So I worded that first post a little oddly, sorry about that.
But again, to take advantage of it, people will have to buy the console.
How is it shooting themselves in the foot if people have to buy the thing to take advantage of it?
“Oh no, looky here, I’ve done shot myself in the foot. Now you’ll have to take your money!”
Consoles are routinely sold at or below cost, and the profit is made through license fees on games.
And licence fees are determined on how many of the consoles are sold, regardless of the reason people buy the console for.
But licensing fees are paid only if games are actually sold, not pirated.
The hacking being discussed is about the ability to run homebrew stuff on consoles, not about pirating.
I doubt companies are really drilling down past the “how many consoles are sold” figures, and I doubt Microsoft would want to set the licence fees based on anything lower level than how many consoles are sold, because they are the more flattering figures.
Microsoft aren’t going to be saying “ignore these sales figures, because our internal research says the real figures of people likely to pay for your game is less.”