this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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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 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:
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).
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.
That mmight be because currently the SEO space for "nintendo switch cart firmware" searches seems to be globbed by mentions to the flashcart project, depending on where / how do you search. Currently it eats up the first page and a half for me, even on DDG.
I have the physical carts that prove it. It's how I got my Switch in Pegascape to upgrade firmware safely in the first place. It was also critical to getting some very early upgrades (3.x) going. Perhaps they're just not doing it anylonger for newer fws?
A few sources on the existence of such carts include various threads at gbatemp, gamefaqs, and the ChoiDujourNX FAQ. What I don't know is if the upgrade is part of the game cart data or if it's partitioned sepaately.
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.
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