Switch News: Team Xecuter’s testing phase ‘might take another 2 weeks’ to kick off due to Coronavirus according to emails sent out to accepted testers

With the amount of coronavirus infections having reached over 67,000 and the death toll surpassing 1.5 thousand, it’s no surprise that various parts of the industry have been affected and this also includes the production of Team Xecuter’s upcoming modchips. In this article, we’ll be looking at the potential delay in the start of public testing of TX’s new hacking solution due to the virus.

Team Xecuter’s testing phase may start later due to coronavirus

Earlier this week, Team Xecuter announced the start of the testing phase for their upcoming SX Core and SX Lite hacking solutions for ipatched/mariko units and Switch Lite units respectively.

Team Xecuter’s SX Core and SX Lite have generated a huge deal of interest but due to the Coronavirus, things may have to be delayed a bit

This testing phase allows up to 300 known scene modders who have soldering skills and qualifying hardware to apply to receive a pre-production modchip in order to give feedback which will ultimately help Team Xecuter create a more robust final product. In the days following the announcement, numerous modders applied to be part of the testing effort but then, Team Xecuter gave them some unfortunate news which was shared to us by a trusted scene member.

This unfortunate news consists of Team Xecuter potentially having to delay the start of their testing phase since ‘it might take another 2 weeks’ before they’ll be able to ship modchips due to the Coronavirus. This is because the factory where the modchips are being produced is closed presumably due to concerns about the Coronavirus as Chinese authorities are imposing various measures in order to stop the spread of the virus.

What may be the result of the delay?

It’ll probably be taking a bit longer before you can run SX OS 3.0 on your Switch Lite so patience is key now!

If the 2 week delay takes place, activities related to the SX Core/Lite modchips will be shifted quite a bit and perhaps, we’ll be seeing a release closer to the middle of this year (maybe April-June) rather than early this year. On the bright side, it means that Nintendo will take longer to get its hands on the modchips and start creating new hardware revisions to patch the hardware issue so this may just give you more time to decide on buying a Switch console for hacking.

However, things still seem promising when it comes to Team Xecuter delivering but a public release may take a bit longer due to the coronavirus. Furthermore, the Chinese government may opt to introduce further restrictions if infection rates keep on rising so there may be some issues with production even when the units for the testing phase are eventually produced.

Conclusion

If your currently unhackable Switch is there collecting dust, you may be interested in some recent homebrew scene releases for other platforms like RetroArch r3 for the PS4 and an English translation patch for Catherine: Full Body on the PSVita!