 Look I know it's Christmas Eve folks but we really had to get to this story because it's such a big one and I'm sure Nintendo Is not having a very merry christmas with this stuff breaking right now But hey, this is the reality of the world we're in especially with cartridge based systems So let's just dive in Nintendo switch may be coming to a close sooner rather than later If for nothing other than the breaking news development of nintendo switch flash carts Now what are flash carts? It's nothing new to gaming. That's for sure For cartridge based systems flash carts are basically a dummy cartridge for said device that can read off things Like micro sd cards or even localized internal storage on the cart to play any game Locally on a system without needing to actually hack said system The system recognizes the flash cart as a standard normal game cartridge And they are nearly impossible to detect since blocking the ways in which the system reads the cartridge Could also block legit cartridges of actual games As such they are not necessarily easy to develop and often take a majority of a system's lifetime For coders to crack the case and trick the system regardless of firmware Into recognizing them as legit game cartridges This is also highly illegal Flash carts are not indirectly but literally linked to piracy while people can argue the legality of emulation It's far different argument when talking about downloading robbs Loading them on a micro sd card and slapping them in a flash cart and playing them locally on a native device That is piracy at its core Of course some do try the legal argument because games do degrade over time and taking your legally attainable backup files And loading them on flash carts ensures they remain playable essentially forever. It's a fair argument But come on guys. We weren't born last week. That's not why these devices are popular This is why Nintendo has won countless lawsuits against flash cart makers for prior systems like the nintendo ds and 3ds Unfortunately once the tech exists It's quickly decompiled and then nefarious actors in countries that are hard for Nintendo to stop such as china Begin mass production at a scale that is unstoppable. Yeah, just go ahead and try to buy a ds or 3ds flash cart today It's pretty easy So sure nintendo may win a lawsuit But this one is one of those items that once it exists It just exists forever and there isn't much that can be done about it Well, according to twitter user after timex this exact thing now technically exists for the nintendo switch Though it's not released publicly just yet supposedly units are shipping in january of 2024 Who is shipping those units? Well after timex refused to reveal this as this is likely happening first in a country that isn't that well regulated Still once it's in the public's hands It will spread like fire and this time we don't just have to believe it as some sort of rumor We have an actual video showing the flash cart working This is typically a company's worst nightmare like nintendo Well, some can argue that hey this helps increase system sales for years to come A majority of revenue made by consoles is actually from game sales not system sales So those system sales staying high doesn't inherently help said parent company at all Is sony making handhelds even though this exact thing happened with the psb and it's sold 80 million? No, this sort of piracy really doesn't help companies as much as people think What it does do though is arguably push nintendo to get switched to out the door sooner Though to be fair that was probably already the plan with so many revealed in the first half of next year rumors floating out there Combined with the relatively light lineup nintendo has right now Guys nintendo is not going to be happy about this. Let's just say this is not a very merry christmas for the big n And this was bound to happen someday any cartridge based system specifically is going to have flash carts made eventually And it's honestly really nice for nintendo anyways is that it took this long Really until nearly the end of the switch's seventh year on the market for such a device to exist What this does mean is yeah, it didn't hurt a majority of nintendo sales over the generation right? Tears of the kingdom still sold 20 million plus and that came out last year So that's the good news is that most of nintendo's big releases are behind them And they've already made all their money off of them The bad news of course is That this is the sort of thing that makes companies not only file lawsuits and deal with all this stuff legally But want to get new devices out sooner and I guess for switch owners that maybe we're hoping the switch shoe would be 2025 2026 I don't really think that that's realistic at this point because since this is hacked The idea now would be hey, we got to get this new device out sooner Which is likely using a brand new cartridge type with brand new nand flash and not the same thing That nintendo switch is using so then they can deal with it Also, it's probably using a brand new version of the firmware that likely this flash cart will not be compatible with I know it's compatible with all current firmware on switch, but this is going to be switched too It's going to probably be a different customized firmware So it probably won't be compatible with that anyways So even trying to like pirate switch games and just bring them to switch to could be quite difficult And honestly if this hurts anything The biggest thing I could see at hurting if this becomes a massive problem for nintendo will be cross generation games And nintendo will be far less inclined to do cross generation games If people can just pirate the switch version and play it on switch too But again, this is all hypothetical at this point We do know is we do have a history of flash carts literally hurting nintendo sales But you might go well have they look at the ds is sold nearly a billion pieces of software My counterpoint is the switch is sold even less than the ds and yet it's sold 1.3 billion Imagine the amount of software sales that might have been lost to the invention of flash carts So yeah, it is a big deal and it does hurt companies But it is what it is it was always going to exist one day nintendo is not going to be very happy But at least this happened towards the end of the generation where nintendo has a new system coming out that does not have a flash cart compatible with it We'll see when they decide to reveal that system because i'm sure they're going to want to take the news away from this bad news Rather soon and there's already been like even rumors out there. They might reveal this thing as soon as january We don't really know something march something is going to be revealed next summer Either way sometime in the next six months and I know I've been saying this for a bit now We're probably going to see switch too. So anyways, thank you so much for tuning in And you know what guys we'll catch you in the next video after I remind you that hey Have a merry christmas. Happy holidays. Kwanzaa, Hanukkah Festivus if you're one of those crazy people that turn that into a real thing Thank you guys. Catch you later