Next Gen Modding...

I always told myself, I would get the first next- gen system that was able to be modded. Sort of the reason, I got my PS2 before my xbox, not to mention my PS2 could play all my PSX copied games...

So, my main question, in terms of progression, which next-gen system has progressed the farthest in terms of being able to play homebrew, copied, etc? I assume the XBox 360, is this correct?

Looking for a system that can take the place of my xbox, my current xbox with its media center, being able to play xvid's, and upgraded internal 500 gig hard drive, and all of the emulators (Sega CD, MAME, etc) that it can play.

I think as it stands now in terms of homebrew and pirating its without a doubt got to be the Wii. Followed by 360 followed by PS3.

Armed only with an SD card (and if you want it as USB drive) you can pretty easily transform your Wii into a pretty massive multi media machine (without having to take anything apart or touch any of the hardware).

- You can store and run Wii games from the USB drive (you dont even need disks).
- Play pirated Gamecube games.
- Use your USB Drive or SD card to run and store emulators (and all the roms).
- Store and run video and music (.avi, xvid.. load of formats) from the USB or SD.
- Plus a whole bunch of other random homebrew apps and stuff.

Trouble is most Wii games are kind of trashy.. so well I dunno.

The 360 has a pretty sweet set up in terms of playing copied games.
Im not sure exactly about its capability to run homebrew and media type files (although Im sure it can be done with a mod chip fitted).

I think PSP was the best for homebrew back in the day.

I'm still debating on whether to get a 360 or a Wii. I'll mostly use it for homebrew/media center...360?

i have both wii and xbox 360 and i must say that the better in terms of availability of games is the xbox just be wary of using live but to be fair to the wii this is just as good if like myself you have young children and you can still go online with the wii without any fear of it being stopped so try getting both as i know it saved me a small fortune when i got mine modded

If your looking for a console to turn into a media center then you should go with Wii. There is no doubt that this is the better option. By a long long way. Its capabilitys as far as hacking go, outperform the Xbox in everyway.

If your buying mainly with an interest in games then in my opinion the Xbox is going to always be the better option. Personally I feel the best of the Wii in many respects is better than the best of Xbox. The Wii is less reliable though. With the Xbox you know there are always going to be AAA titles on the horizon. Its just a much better all round choice I think.

Well if someone had successfully cracked the PS3, I believe that would be the perfect console for a Media Center. I'll look into the Wii.

MrLex I've got a few questions:

Is it easy to setup the media center aspect on the Wii?
How easy is it to Softmod?
Can you remove the softmod hack to it's original state - Warranty purposes.

To be honest with you Ive never really heard anything about how easy the PS3 is to mod. I always thought you needed install a mod chip.

Setting up homebrew on the Wii is as easy as putting some files on an SD card, and installing them on your Wii. Once this is done you'll have the Homebrew Channel installed on your Wii menu. This will allow you to run any application on your Wii, simply by loading the files from your SD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGeMP1zsW2I

The Media Center aspect can be achieved via an application called MPlayer CE. Its just a Wii homebrew app that loads movies and music files from a USB drive or SD. Another piece of software to install (via the Homebrew Channel) is DVDX which will enable your Wii to play DVDs (Its actually kind of funny that hackers worked that out because Nintendo themselves said such an update would be impossible).

With the Homebrew Channel installed and using various Apps you can do a whole lot more with your Wii also (install different System Menu themes, load Wii games from a USB Drive, enable the play of copied Gamecube Disks, install downloaded WiiWare and Virtual Console games from an SD, run emulators and so on).

As far as protection goes the warrenty isnt void because you will at no stage be affecting the hardware. All you technically would have to do is remove the Homebrew Channel and any apps you installed to return your Wii to 'legal' state that Nintendo would be happy to deal with. The issue comes if you somehow manage to brick your Wii (which is rare but it can happen).

Nowadays however, hackers have designed pretty good precection software to protect your Wii if this does happen. You can create a back up of your Wii entire flash memory (whilst its in a good state), then if it does brick you can force your Wii to go back to this earlier backup. If your planning on installing homebrew then sorting this out should be a big priority. Again though its all installed via the homebrew channel. The protection software is called bootmii.

Theres a pretty good guide for all this (with downloads) over on GBATemp:
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=171901

To be honest with you Ive never really heard anything about how easy the PS3 is to mod. I always thought you needed install a mod chip.

Setting up homebrew on the Wii is as easy as putting some files on an SD card, and installing them on your Wii. Once this is done you'll have the Homebrew Channel installed on your Wii menu. This will allow you to run any application on your Wii, simply by loading the files from your SD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGeMP1zsW2I

The Media Center aspect can be achieved via an application called MPlayer CE. Its just a Wii homebrew app that loads movies and music files from a USB drive or SD. Another piece of software to install (via the Homebrew Channel) is DVDX which will enable your Wii to play DVDs (Its actually kind of funny that hackers worked that out because Nintendo themselves said such an update would be impossible).

With the Homebrew Channel installed and using various Apps you can do a whole lot more with your Wii also (install different System Menu themes, load Wii games from a USB Drive, enable the play of copied Gamecube Disks, install downloaded WiiWare and Virtual Console games from an SD, run emulators and so on).

As far as protection goes the warrenty isnt void because you will at no stage be affecting the hardware. All you technically would have to do is remove the Homebrew Channel and any apps you installed to return your Wii to 'legal' state that Nintendo would be happy to deal with. The issue comes if you somehow manage to brick your Wii (which is rare but it can happen).

Nowadays however, hackers have designed pretty good precection software to protect your Wii if this does happen. You can create a back up of your Wii entire flash memory (whilst its in a good state), then if it does brick you can force your Wii to go back to this earlier backup. If your planning on installing homebrew then sorting this out should be a big priority. Again though its all installed via the homebrew channel. The protection software is called bootmii.

Theres a pretty good guide for all this (with downloads) over on GBATemp:
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=171901

The Wii is good in terms of homebrew and backups. If you are a developer, you should find yourself quite at home with everything except for the graphics API which is nonstandard and there are no fully functional wrappers. The SDL wrapper is partially complete, but in general you'd be hard pressed to make good use of the hardware. For everything else, its great.

What is interesting, and not many know about, is that the 360 is now officially hacked. You can straight up run code with full hardware access with nothing more than 3 resistors and a JTAG cable (as long as you haven't installed the summer 2009 update, and a few other tidbits atm). Which is kind of the problem. The exploit currently in use has been patched; any console that has updated to the most recent update is a no-go and there is currently no way of downgrading (or any that I can be anticipated without a modchip, according to xboxhacker forums). Anyway, its cool stuff, and you can learn more at http://www.free60.org/. If you don't have an ethernet cable and/or Live, like at least 50% of the 360 user base, and are willing, like 1% of the user base, then you are in luck :)