Recently Unveiled Exploit May Make Nintendo Switch Jailbreak A Reality

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A new bootROM exploit has been discovered which may allow for a Nintendo Switch Jailbreak.

The Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch has been far more popular than anyone anticipated, and when the system first launched there were very few consoles available due to the massive demand. While it’s now easy to get your hands on a system, the demand for the switch and quality Nintendo games has not died down.

In addition to the excellent titles we know and love like Zelda, Mario, Kirby, and Donkey Kong, the company has offered a surprising amount of third-party support for indie developers – making the system the go-to device for independent games outside of the PC. With recent launches of blockbusters like Fortnite and Paladins, the system is truly coming into its own as one of the best consoles on the market – perhaps even taking some business away from Sony and Microsoft.

With that said, there are still a number of limitations with the Nintendo Switch that many hoped the company would address. The lack of support for previous Nintendo releases may be acknowledged with the release of their online service, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever have access to the entirety of the Nintendo library on a modern console.

With that said, not all hope is lost if you’re willing to mess around a bit with the system and implement some key tweaks. Enter the Nintendo Switch Jailbreak.

Nintendo Switch Jailbreak

When most people think of jailbreaks, their thoughts immediately go to iPhones which have been notoriously restrictive in terms of what they will let people do within the stock operating system. However, jailbreaking extends across a number of industries and allows users to unlock the full potential of a device – free from any interference from the manufacturer themselves.

Many have hoped for a Nintendo Switch jailbreak for quite some time in hopes of playing some of their favorite games on the new system, and it appears as if a coding mistake in the Switch’s read-only bootROM may allow for that wish to be fulfilled.

One of the notable aspects of the bootROM issue is that it’s an issue with hardware, and as such, cannot be addressed with a new software patch. This means that if you currently have a system, your Nintendo Switch jailbreak can’t be fixed by Nintendo by any ordinary means.

The bootROM is read-only, but a workaround has been discovered that forces the Switch into USB recovery mode and overwhelms its direct memory access buffer. In order to do so, you’ll need to make a simple modification which involves shorting a single pin in the Joy-Con controller.

This might be a little bit difficult for the average user, but the hacking team fail0verflow has come up with a device that makes shorting the USB pin much easier. It’s a physical device that you can slide into the edge of the console in order to carry out the Nintendo Switch jailbreak.

It appears as if the jailbreak is working as intended, as the team has tweeted out a picture of the Switch running The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – suggesting that they were able to get a Dolphin emulator working on the device.

Right now, it’s still a little difficult to get a Nintendo Switch jailbreak working for the average user, but as the jailbreaking community continues to collaborate, it’s likely we’ll see the development of solutions that can take advantage of this bootROM issue in a much more user-friendly fashion.

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