Nintendo has used its latest Nintendo Wii firmware upgrade to continue its battle of wills against hackers, homebrewers and pirates. The Wii’s unauthorised Homebrew Channel has been broken in the update, making it impossible to install new homebrew software. Previously existing installs should remain unaffected.

Nintendo’s main target is obviously the piracy, including the numerous means of nicking virtual console, WiiWare and full Wii games. Homebrew and piracy are very different things though – piracy is effectively theft, while homebrew software is a considerably more legitimate means of getting more from your console. Even if it isn’t stamped with Ninty’s seal of approval, it doesn’t cost the company money.

It’ll probably be a matter of days before the Homebrew Channel is fixed and back up to full running speed anyway; then it’ll be up to to Nintendo to create a new update that breaks it all over again, and of the PSP is anything to go by, this will continue ad nauseam.

Interestingly, although the Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 are both suffering from piracy, Sony’s PS3 has so far proved immune. Seeing as there’s nothing hackers like more than beating seemingly impenetrable security systems, the PS3’s piracy immunity can only have stemmed from the fact that Sony lets you install your own operating system on to the console as you please.

Homebrewers get everything they want, while piracy is averted – so it’ll be very interesting to see if the Wii 2 or Xbox 720 adopt a similar idea to protect themselves in the next generation or offer up authorised Homebrew Channels of their own.

(via Engadget)