I think you’re right about SEO cluttering up searches with flash cart and also probably search engines becoming crappier in general. Everything I encountered so far has been telling me “no” and I had to look really hard to start finding traces of updating through game carts as far back as around 2019.

That said, the general consensus nowadays is still “no” since I guess they stopped doing it for newer firmwares as you suggested.

In any case we’ll find out in due time as people start getting their hands on the flash cart and see how the cat and mouse plays out.

Fair point. To be also fair I’d consider that anyone who is considering still mainlining a Switch in 202X and would be any interested in a flashcart, it would be because their system is already modded.

Interesting point. Although quite the contrary, I’d think the flashcart mostly interests switch owners who didn’t mod their console for whatever reason. Eg. OLED owners, cost of modchip install, lack of access to reputable installers, risk of physical damages, voiding warranty, hassle of juggling cfw updates, etc.

I’m not sure what you mean by mainlining a switch means, but I’m a fairly new switch owner myself(late 2022). I bought the OLED at a discount not knowing the high costs associated with modding specifically the OLED model. (At the time it was upwards of $300CAD for modchip and install, and there were plenty of horror stories of how finicky it was) Had a flashcart been available at the time, I’d buy that in a heartbeat instead.

For people who didn’t mod and already own a library of games, a flashcart would’ve still been a cheap and good opportunity for people to discover new games they otherwise have missed or wouldn’t have bought either way.

I might be remembering wrong but I’ve found formware upgrades in carts such as FE3H and New Pokémon Snap. It’s not like they’re that heavy, so they can easily be added as payload to the cart.

I haven’t been able to find any resources online that suggest firmware is embedded onto the game carts at all. What you may have confused with is GAME UPDATES, which can be present on carts. The issue with your suggestion is two-fold:

1. By injecting a payload to the cart, you have to modify the game rom(xci) and thus invalidate the NCA signature. It is my educated guess(with no proof admittedly) that this is the reason that the switch failed to launch games when they tried to add updates and DLC onto the MIG. (OP’s video mentioned this in an update).

2. Even if point one wasn’t the case, the console does not know what to do with the firmware because there’s no mechanism to update from an offline source to the best of my knowledge. Even the Switch’s own maintenance mode requires internet connection to download a new firmware.

How would you install the firmware that you obtained from the Archives tho? Remember that the console for all intents and purposes is unmodded so Daybreak is not an option.

Unlike previous handheld generations, system firmwares are no longer embedded into the game carts either so while a game can require a newer firmware, it does not come with an option to update offline afaik

Ah okay so I guess the mig can’t spoof ids. Then in any case it’s probably only a matter of time the console gets banned if it ever reaches the internet, which is worse than modding because now you have no way of updating the firmware for future games.

Maybe if you use the widely circulated ones.

I can imagine plenty of people will start(have been) dumping rental carts from ie. the library.

If those dumps loaded onto the mig are indistinguishable from the original and Nintendo starts banning those, they risk banning a lot of other legitimate players who also rented and played on those carts.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it didn’t use to be an issue to Nintendo because you had to install the xci and that was detectable. Now you can run the game off the cart directly.

Wow thank you for reminding me this site exists!

dhmy has been around for quite some time. Probably been around longer than a good chunk of the folks here even. I have some stuff downloaded from them dating back to like 2003, albeit dmhy.net at the time.

While I cannot vouch for the validity of the contents hosted there now since I haven’t been to the site for over a decade, if I have to look for something in this niche area I would definitely be willing to use the site. If anything I don’t think the domains have changed hands since.