It appears Team Xecuter are back with the MIG Switch Flashcart
Mig Switch flashcarts – source skinpixel
A few weeks ago, “news” website AfterTimeX broke exclusive info about an upcoming flashcart for the Nintendo Switch. Alleged to work on “all models, all firmwares”, the device seems to be a pirate’s wet dream, although it is officially advertised as a “backup and development device”.
MIG Switch – Team Xecuter are back at it
It certainly was strange that an unknown mainstream tech website was getting exclusive information about an upcoming piracy device.
A little bit of digging with publicly available tools revealed that AfterTimeX is, or has been at some point, hosted on the same server as GaryOPA‘s personal site garyopa.com. I love to believe in coincidences, but in my opinion it is pretty clear that Gary OPA, fresh out of jail for his involvement with Team Xecuter, now hosts AfterTimeX’s site, a “tech” site that happens to have exclusive info about an upcoming Nintendo Switch flashcart. What are the odds!
Nothing bad with owning a blog that talks about tech and hacking (I should know), but of course this relation between AfterTimeX and GaryOPA, combined with the fact that this relatively unknown website magically got exclusive news about the MIG flashcart for the Nintendo Switch… well it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that AfterTimeX is probably just a front like MaxConsole used to be. (Just my opinion, of course).
This is taking a well established technique from Team Xecuter’s book: have a semi legitimate news website that brings awareness to the upcoming product, then let the internet hype do the rest. I personally fell right into the trap, and contributed to the awareness of the MIG Switch. Not that they needed me anyway, considering the attention this product has been receiving!
Other people have confirmed to me that another prominent Team Xecuter member, or someone claiming to be him, is also involved with AfterTimeX. I have been asked to not share additional details on that.
At this point, it doesn’t take a huge leap to reach the conclusion that 1) AfterTimeX are affiliated with MIG Switch (and are probably the same people), 2) some of the folks from Team-Xecuter are behind the product, or at the very least helping with its distribution. There’s of course still a tiny possibility this could be an elaborate set up against Max Louarn and Gary OPA, but when confronted about it, Gary has failed to provide compelling answers to justify his name showing up there.
Gary himself addressed this on his discord channel (screenshot shared here by linuxares: https://t.co/rAu2Uv0kDR) and instead of denying, it he claimed to have been a victim of a “DNS poisoning” attack, which can be easily disproven once you have his leaked IP address.
— Mike Heskin (@hexkyz) December 31, 2023
In the grand scheme of things, this probably doesn’t matter much, except for Gary “OPA” Bowser who might end up in legal trouble again.
MVG has a pretty clear video explaining the whole situation in details:
MIG Switch – What we know so far
Now that the Team Xecuter gossip is out of the way, let’s talk about the device itself.
The MIG Switch is a Switch cartridge that will hold several ROMs (“backups” of Switch games) and has a mechanism to switch (no pun intended) between the multiple games. Although creating backups of your own games has legitimate use cases, it is pretty obvious that the majority of buyers will intend to use it for piracy.
There’s good reason to believe the device works as advertised, or rather, everything looks legit in terms of their claims. There are however two massive concerns that have not been really addressed so far, specifically:
- The risk of getting one’s console banned for piracy. Multiple people have talked about how each individual switch game has a unique certificate/signature, and Nintendo could easily detect duplicates.
- This also raises some questions about the future risk of buying a legitimate cartridge that has been used in the past to create backups. Could that one authentic Switch cartridge incorrectly get you a ban if you bought it on the second hand market? It will be very interesting to see what actions Nintendo take here
- The second question is whether a firmware update could instantly render the device useless. The multiple teams creating “backup” devices on consoles in the past, and making a nice profit doing this, have always claimed their product was going to work “forever”. This has proven, time after time, to just be marketing BS to sell more units. Some people are already stating that Nintendo have counter measures ready to be activated in future firmwares against this kind of device.
Because of these concerns, the folks behind MIG Switch added the following disclaimer on their page earlier this week:
Mig Switch is a backup and development device. As such, we only support and guarantee your gaming with your own games backups.
This applies to online too. If you want to play online with the full Mig Switch warranty, you need to use your own dumped backups with genuine Certificate, UID and Card Set ID.
Failure to respect this rule might end up in bans from Nintendo© online service, which we won’t be held responsible for.
Review units have allegedly shipped. Yours truly has requested one, but I never got an answer, which isn’t surprising considering that I’m generally antagonistic against these products in general and Team Xecuter in particular. Or maybe my message got lost in the mail… Hey Max, send some love from “Russia” to a fellow French citizen so you at least get one honest review 😉
Some retail sites already have the device up for preorders. Prices that have been floating around seem to be somewhere around $65 (or £70 in the UK) for the flashcart alone. The “dumper” hardware is apparently sold separately, although if you own a hacked Switch you should be able to use existing open source tools to dump your own games (the logic of dumping your own games to then copy them on a $65 cartridge instead of a $10 SD card evades me, but I’m sure there’s a good, legitimate use case hidden somewhere in here).
For most people looking to buy one, I’m guessing you will have to wait for a “Wave 2” order, which allegedly will come around March. By then we’ll know if the device is actually relevant, or if modding your switch “the hard way” remains the best thing to do.
As a reminder, You can get a hackable “unpatched V1” switch for less than $200 on the second hand market (Affiliate link. As an eBay Partner, I may be compensated if you make a purchase). Consider that as an option if you’re thinking of buying a $65 flashcart + “price yet to be announced” dumper device.
Good to here!
It will be interesting to see if this works with the upcoming “Switch 2”.
the dumper vs cartridge separation seems pretty obvious to me.
Cartridge is just the pins, like any other old console, can be reused. However the piracy measures and actual dumping are what needs to be updated primarily. Which means… All to write truth/lies on very thin lines, but also to avoid nintendo legally messing around with the advertising (the ones who actually dump games will have both alledgedly, the others not so much), but “they have no responsability on how people use their item”
I have the open source tools and everything, but the MIG switch appeals but not why you think, I have a V1 Hackable switch but it has no OLED screen and say I want the better more expensive screen, well I can find Premods on Etsy but last I looked they were upwards of 700, the MIG Switch along with an OLED switch might actually cut down on the cost to have the same thing only on an OLED.
Fair enough, the OLED is a compelling use case!
Oh, As an Aside, I forgot to mention. I don’t have microsoldering talents, but, I found this school, up In Canada and i live in Oregon so Vancouver, BC isn’t far away offering education on smartphone repair and microsoldering that comes with a certificate and I wanted to pay someone to stand over me as I DID the soldering work and you know, offer input. I have a slight hand tremor, but the more I learn it seems if I mess up it’s usually just a redo and clean up job. learned about flux and everything already.
You can get a use OLED tablet for ~$200 on eBay, then send it to a solderer to mod for only around ~$150, chopping the $700 price in half. $150 is still a good bit more than $65, but given that the cart definitely won’t run homebrew, I think the $85 extra is worth it. The one potential use case I see here is online games *maybe* being piratable through the cart, especially if digital games can be run as well for the handful of cloud games the switch has, though that ultimately seems unlikely, depending on how Nintendo handles it.
Very coincidental indeed, could even call it too obvious: AfterServingTime.com
Even funnier is that this device literally BEGS for a ban due to Nintendo’s cartridge fingerprinting and game activity logs…
Why are you spy detective on why created this? WHO CARES???? IT IS AMAZING for the switch community you sell out.
LOL how exactly am I a sellout?
Because you dont really care about the community if “hunt” these fellows. the more opportunities for the switch the better!
Team Xecuter have a long history of bricking consoles to teach people a lesson, of dropping support for their products as soon as it becomes profitable for them to do so, of heavily encrypting their stuff to make sure the open source community can not benefit from their findings, while simultaneously using open source software without respecting its licenses. Their criminal operations give reason to companies like Nintendo to sue anything related to Homebrew, and as such Team Xecuter are one of the biggest threat to good actors in the Homebrew community, because they paint a target on all of us with their enterprise. If you think TX care about the community, you haven’t been paying attention. They’re in it for the money and don’t care if they destroy the community in their wake.
You are right that this will bring more opportunities because gifted hackers will ultimately reverse engineer MIG Switch, but if you think Team Xecuter are doing this for the “community” you’re very wrong.
TX have very skilled individuals doing some of the engineering work, don’t get me wrong. It’s the whole business model surrounding it that is a threat to the homebrew scene.
I have never had a bricked console. So whatever isolated incident (assuming true) you are talking about it’s negligible or hardly worth mentioning and i have had gateway and sx os. I mean it sux if that happens to some people, and in no way good. but if the average user doesnt experience it really doesn’t mean much if anything. It sux that supports stop at some point, but they are in no way obligated to keep working for us. Also whatever support, they have already produced immense value by their products. And if they make money with it, thats the way the world works, all the best. And they have the right to protect their products, even if if I prefer open source myself aswell.
I think you are delusional if you think that if TX is gone nintendo will stop care about people hacking their consoles via whatever means. The “homebrew” community is just a front for piracy for 98% anyway, while they can keep their legal “morality” in check for the outside world.
Well, left or right… if this cart is made by TX then they are doing it “for” the community, simply by the effects of their products will have…and the opportunity it provides simple as that…even if they care more for money
The homebrew scene itself is already a threat. Cant blame TX for that. Any way that touches nintendo intellectual property.
“It never happened to me so the problem doesn’t exist”. I didn’t read afterwards.
Wish you had a thumbs up button. Nailed it Wololo. Appreciate your website, content, thought pieces for years.
Hey Peter, remember the time this group bricked a bunch of 3ds consoles because people tried to use an open source alternative to it? I’m sure it won’t happen this time, probably….
What I’m really curious about is whether or not this device could eventually be used to softmod the unhackable Switches. Kinda like how you can use a DS flashcart flashed with ntrboot to hack your 3DS on higher firmware.
MVG is fairly sus as it was due to him Bowser got ratted out.
LOL why would you think that? You think the FBI and Interpol don’t have their own sources?
The article is providing transparency so you can make the best decision. We all saw what happened to Sx OS, they abandoned their customers. I’ll definitely won’t buy because I think a revision to this product is inevitable but I’ll keep an eye on it so see how this goes.
worst *** ewer
for all the hate they got I actually liked TX products. Super simple to use. Especially their early og xbox stuff.
Yup, I’ll give them that.
I’m guessing even the clones of these carts will be following up not long after given the nature of these things
certainly dont mind throwing them a few bucks for contributing to the scene, barely any support these days tho im still concerned with their rep, these were the same guys who did the sx an got *** their device got cloned an put brick code in the software is it not, god forbid if/when someone cracks this device, was a big team xecuter supporter till that point, they been contributing in the scene for a long time, hope that was just a one time lapse in judgement
I still don’t understand how this will handle the per cart, unique cryptographic ID. It seems to be a device that will absolutely work, but will get the console banned immediately upon connecting online to anything Nintendo. There’s a big difference between emummc and a flash cart.
Some people have told me about some legitimate use cases: It’s a very specific scenario, but for example if you one one hacked Switch and an unhacked one, you would be able to duplicate your games via the hacked console, then carry all of them on a single cartridge to play on the go with the unhacked one. In that case, those are your games, used on both consoles you own, I don’t this how (or why) Nintendo would ban this.
If you get one to ‘test’, aren’t you worried about a banned or bricked console?
I am. If they did send me a review copy I’m not sure I’d actually try it. I only have one Switch console and no plan to get it banned, as we use it with actual purchased games.
I think this is jumping the gun a bit. Gary might have other motives. For example, maybe the ones behind this MIG Switch asked for Gary’s help to start spreading the news of the device they’re developing and Gary felt like helping because he shares a belief in some kind of weird set of “values” in the act of pirating (or maybe disdain for the concept of copyright? who knows). Maybe Gary’s an old friend of them.
I mean, I am not saying he’s not in the wrong in his situation, but probably not copyright infringing, at the very least, as long as the only thing he did was help spreading the news.
For the record: I do NOT condone piracy.
I actually 100% agree with you. I want to believe this is what’s happening. Not that Gary is 100% involved with this, but simply he doesn’t see the harm in helping spread the word. I do believe however, given his past, that’s he’s treading very dangerous waters by doing this.
Why do you keep spreading misinformation. Nintendo WONT BAN ANYONE, PERIOD.
What’s to stop little timmy, from ‘backing-up’ his 200+ game collection, then selling the originals on ebay or gamestop ect. Nintendo would kill 3rd party trading, which they would NEVER do.
Also, less than 4% of Nintendo Switch users ever connect it online or use Nintendo Online Services, according to Nintendo Statistics in 2023.
Lot’s of ‘shills’ youtubers/sites ect are trying to discredit this, because it destroys their sponsored ‘$150’ hardware mod chip solution. Just like the R4DS did, this device will make any other solution completely worthless.
Other solutions such as the picofly are literally open source and cost $10. what are you talking about. This is more expensive and less versatile than existing solutions. The only benefit (a big one, I admit) is that it doesn’t need to solder a modchip. On every other aspect, this solution is worse than what already exists.
Nintendo won’t ban anyone guys, all those people that were hit with legal troubles after advertising installation services or modchip sales whether they did 5 or 500 installs/sales are clearly all liars and nintendo doesn’t ever chase a minority!
Literally *** for you to try to say “they won’t ban bro, trust” when they have several countermeasures in place for this very thing and it’ll be almost entirely automated bans. It’s not even about banning people who are actively playing online using their services, it’s about people who are stealing their games… which is a lot larger number, and if they embed updates in carts and people are forced to update and have the mig stop working? did you ever own an r4 card? the game of cat and mouse has just begun.
Maybe try google “nintendo belgian waffle” or “knock and talk” and read on the lengths they do and will go to… You delusional knuckle dragger just go crawl back into your pit
My favorite hackers are definitely those who contribute to or directly assemble straightforward payloads that allow any end user to do whatever they want with a device… With all the hacks getting sold off sight unseen nowadays though, I’ll cheer for the profiteers that sell to the consumer rather than help shut the door on us. I understand, people gotta eat, people want to live large, hacking is work too.