Before I start to say anything I'd like to explain a few things about my systems. At this moment I have a Wii, DS, and a PS2, all of which have some sort of hack on them. I have a soft modded Wii with the Homebrew Channel on it, an R4 for my DS, and Free Mc Boot (FMCB) for my PS2 as well as a flip top cover. So, as long as you know where my bias opinion comes from, I'll begin to discuss why these are not a bad thing.

The Homebrew channel in all it's glory!

So I'll break it up into sections based on system. The PS2 will come first, since it's the most recent I've done. So I finally decided to hard mod, and soft mod my PS2. Why? I don't know, mostly because I can. I discovered much more than I thought I could get. So I joined a few forums to decide what's best for me. I was directed to a thing called Swap Magic. Many of you have probably heard of this, some of you may have this. For those of you that don't know what it is, it's a disc that will allow the PS2 to read backups and out of region games. There are so many good things that can come out of this. Region restricted gaming doesn't allow us gamers to get the full experience of gaming we deserve. Now on to piracy. Yes, piracy happens when we are given the opportunity to run "backups" but people who actually want to run games that are backed up so they don't scratch their game are easily able to. Now maybe running backups makes the big corps sweat a little, of course there is a chance to loose profit, but there is a lot more that can be done with hacks that normal people crank out. I mentioned FMCB, which is a soft mod to a memory card for most of you that probably don't know. What it includes is nearly limitless. Yes it can again run backups, but it can run things like emulators and media players. Now having a full media player on something like a PS2 is incredible. Not only can you play burnt DVDs, but play movies and music from a USB card. Why didn't publishers come up with something like this? It seems like a great opportunity for someone to sponsor this, or at least support this. But it was always pushed underground and things like this were frowned upon.

On to the DS. Now there are a lot of cards out for the DS, and already for the DSi. It is incredible how fast they crank these things out. Now cards such as the R4 and M3 are a lot more touchy, especially because one of the sole purposes of these cards is piracy, but the card can do much more than that. These cards have an in depth media player and picture viewer. This was on the original DS, and Nintendo finally made it a function with the DSi. But media was available to anyone that owned a card long before the DSi came out. If some third party developer teamed up with Nintendo, or even Nintendo itself came out with a card that could play media, people would have bought it, and Nintendo could have made money off of yet another crazy accessory. But games were released with patches on them, only for people to find a way around it. Let it be, or create your own is what I say to Nintendo.

Take your pick, there are plenty to go around!

I'll now move on to the most complex hack with the Wii. Now for a few years now... maybe one and a half, I'm not sure, the Homebrew channel has been around. For those of you blissfully unaware of this channel it is a custom channel created by Team Twiizers that used a hack to install a custom channel. I was amazed at the programming that went into making a channel, and the fact that non devs could make something like this was astonishing. What amazed me more was the fact that people could even make their own games and apps for this channel. There are actually some good games out as well. Some games are simple such as tic tac toe or chess, and some can be immersive even building their own 3D world. Once again, piracy came into play, and Nintendo tried to step in and block updates, but of course programmers found a way around it. Again, if Nintendo sponsored something like the Homebrew channel they could monitor it, and even let people make their own games. Hell, even now there is something on the Homebrew channel that lets you download games and things from the internet to your SD. But all Nintendo cares about is their games not being pirated, yet what they should do is help make a community out of it, and encourage people to make their own content for the Wii, creating a new immersive experience.

Let us have our fun!

Now there's 3 systems I didn't mention, pretty much because I don't know much about the development but I'll talk a little bit about all of them. The PSP has a hack for it that allows people to play games directly off their SD. Sony (to my knowledge) hasn't done much about this since really, there is nothing they can do. Maybe the Go fixes this, but I can't be sure. While on Sony, the PS3 doesn't have any sort of hacks at all on it. Well, not exactly true. I've heard that people have gotten Linux to run on it, and even some homebrew, but there hasn't been any piracy. In fact, Sony may even encourage user created content in the form of hacks and mod, as long as there is no piracy, which Sony has monitored well so far. Finally Microsoft's XBOX is not as perfect as the PS3. While I'm not aware of any soft hacks, the 360 does have a hardware hack. Microsoft (to it's credit) has been attempting to block this sort of behavior, and not doing horrible at it either. But Microsoft isn't giving homebrew a chance either, which is a shame, since people could probably crank out much more than what they could on the Wii.

Now, with developers all over trying to protect the PC from pirating games, many developers worry about consoles being hacked. I say put the big three in charge of their systems and allow homebrew to be created, and hey, piracy will always happen, but if you control at least a little bit, people may not want to pirate games, but enjoy the fact that they can play user created content.