Team Xecuter (famous among other things for their work on Xbox and Xbox 360) just announced they are bringing a hack to the Nintendo Switch. They say their “solution” will work on any firmware. As a teaser for the upcoming release, they’ve published a video showing a custom boot of the Nintendo Switch (video below).

Their statement below:

This solution will work on ANY Nintendo Switch console regardless of the currently installed firmware, and will be completely future proof. This is *the* solution for opening up CFW (Custom FirmWare) on the Nintendo Switch. We want to move the community forward and provide a persistent, stable and fast method of running your own code and custom firmware patches on Nintendo’s latest flagship product. And we think we’ve succeeded! 🙂

Team Xecuter is historically heavily focused on hardware mods enabling piracy. Therefore it is not a stretch to think that what they’re working on for the Switch will also be a DRM-filled hardware modification, that they’ll make available for sale on typical online hardware mod retailers.

This announce is made following the recent 34c3 talk on Switch hacks by Plutoo, Derrek, and Naehrwert, in which the hackers announced a homebrew loader was coming for Nintendo Switch running on firmware 3.0.0. Conversely, Team Xecuter are teasing that their solution will work “regardless of the currently installed firmware”.

The console hacking scene has always seen a strong divide between “homebrew” hackers and the piracy scene. It seems the Switch will be no exception, with some hackers already stating they will not be using Team Xecuter’s product.

Team Xecuter announced their “solution” will be available in Spring 2018.

Although they’ve provided some decryption key for the bootloader as proof that they know what they’re talking about (for technically skilled people to verify), there’s always a possibility that this never gets released due to other issues. Team Xecuter have hinted in the past at some Xbox One hack that never saw the light of day (although, in their defense, it was never really announced); and we’ve seen other hardware hack ambitions fail in the console world as well once more open solutions were made available to the scene (think of the Cobra Blackfin on the Vita).

Source: Team Executer, via @smealum