Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch

And this reveals the real reason Nintendo came after Switch emulators - to buy some extra time before Switch 2 gets properly emulated.

The hard part of emulating the Switch 2 probably isn't going to be the actual emulation, but breaking the security so that the games and firmware can be extracted and decrypted. Nintendo pretty much nailed their software security with the Switch 1 but were undone by catastrophic hardware bugs, so we'll have to see how well they learned their lesson on the hardware front next time.

Microsoft and Sony have demonstrated that hardware security can be more or less perfected, neither of their systems have been compromised via hardware attacks for several generations now.

The main hardware security bugs[0] were very low hanging fruit associated with taking over the boot chain at ring 0- it's more likely that Nintendo themselves were in a rush to get the product on the market after the perceived failure of the Wii U. Even with a secure software stack, people found a way to defeat the Xbox 360 hardware[1] by physically drilling into a chip that enforced a software lock, and George Hotz became known for his work in finding ECDSA flaws in the PS3. Companies can design these locks to last for a few years of a console's lifespan, but I think people now are determined enough to dive into these difficult problems that they're unlikely to be secured forever.

[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unpatchable-hardware-exploit-l...

[1] https://gbatemp.net/threads/scanned-drilling-template-16d4s-...

I mean, it is a classic example. If you have access to the hardware and the dedication to do so, you could break almost any security. That's a hilarious example to physically drill into a chip, though

This could be “famous last words”, but as someone who has worked with chip security I’d be very surprised if anyone breaks this generation of hardware at the chip level.

A decade ago the engineers designing these chips knew there were several angles of attack but there just wasn’t enough resources put into closing these holes.

Now every know angle of attack is closed. Even if you delid the chip and reverse engineer every single gate and can probe individual metal wires on the chip, it’ll still be nearly impossible to break the hardware security. Power supply and EM glitching is also protected against (can’t speak for Switch 2 but I’m speaking in general about chips going forward)

Could be bugs and mistakes that allows someone to bypass security, of course. Both in hardware and software. But I don’t think there will be general purpose angles of attack that can be used to bypass security going forward.