What we know about Switch Dev units so far
It’s not a big secret that each console manufacturer have a “retail” and a “dev” versions of their consoles. The debug units are typically sent out to trusted developers to test their games during development, and usually have some differences compared to the retail units, such as more Ram (to test games before optimizing them) or access to hidden functionality of the device.
What is a Nintendo Switch Dev Unit
Dev units are usually not super useful for hacking purposes, but they can help understand some of the underlying functionality of the device, and, more importantly, are pretty cool collector’s items on the grey market.
Typically, Dev units require an activation token to be refreshed regularly, otherwise they become “deactivated” and pretty much unusable. This is to prevent unlicensed users to acquire them on the black market.
Dev units for the Nintendo Switch have randomly surfaced in video game conventions and other places, where software teams have been showcasing early demos of their games on these test consoles.
The first public picture of a Nintendo Switch Dev unit was reported by Nintendeals earlier this year.
Nintendo Switch dev units were accidentally shown in a Nintendo Portugal video, have 64gb of internal storage vs 32gb in production models. pic.twitter.com/qVgJkQfeHG
— Nintendeal (@Nintendeal) February 1, 2017
The screenshot showed that the Dev units have 64GB of internal storage (instead of 32GB for retail units).
More recently, a Dev unit was apparently inadvertently showing its debug menu at Gamescom. The clear screenshot confirms what was already visible in the older leaks, such as the possibility to install games from the SD card, for debugging purposes.
Interesting menus include a Debug menu, an Error log, as well as Firmware information. Hackinformer recently dug into some of these menus to show what they contain:
Screenshot from Hackinformer
The debug menu lets developers play with the initial state of the Ram of the console, Handle exceptions with specific code (this is probably overridden by the firmware’s exception handler in retail units), Overclock the CPU, selectively choose what kind of errors get logged, and more.
Besides the Debug menu, other dev menus on the Nintendo Switch Dev unit include multiple diagnosis tools for the controllers, Network, Timezone, and more.
Overall, none of these are particularly groundbreaking, but could lead to more information on how the Nintendo Swtich operates.
Even if it’s not necessarily useful information, I think it’s pretty interesting to know a bit more about how the console works. I know I’d love to dig in there.
Its always nice to have a look around and get an idea of how things work!
I liked the old Nintendo products, but they have become too gimmicky
Iprefer to buy gaming systems to actually play games….Sure gimmicks are fun at first,but you soon get bored of it and start to want actual gameplay….
Nintendo doesn’t have the budget to go full on force against Sony or Mircosoft for pure console gameplay like the old Nintendo. So Nintendo relies on these gimmicks to stand out from the crowd….and it’s worked for them so far (minus the WiiU). But I agree with you.
You’re no idea you talking about or what a gimmick is. Like the tenka ***.
btw Nintendo has a market cap > Sony.
The only reason to own a nintendo console was monster hunter.
You’re no idea you talking about or what a gimmick is.
I think that the Switchs’ Custom Firmware scene is gonna blow up like in the PS3 CFW days….that’s just me tho…. 😉
I feel like the Switchs’ Custom Firmware scene is gonna blow up like in the PS3’s CFW days but thats just me…. 😉
Does an dev unit of the PS4 exist in the wild? Could be useful for breaking the PS4.
Sorry but every human can see the id (from dev) in this picture…
The SDK also has a method of flashing Game Cards via a Switch USB connection to run the Dev menu when the Switch is set to PROD mode. PROD mode looks just like the regular Switch home menu and when the Game Card is inserted it will show up just like a regular cart but it says Dev Mode or something similar on the icon and booting it will allow you to access a Dev menu like the one in the photos. Although the game card method doesn’t allow all debug features to work correctly if the console is not flashed to Dev Mode.
Installing builds is possible via SD card when in Dev mode.
On the Dev kit if you take off the right joycon and hold R (I believe, may be another button) + power button you can set the switch to a “safe mode” which allows you to flash it using the SDK.