The wording of the title makes for a kinda misleading implication. This is pretty standard - they're called e-fuses. It isn't "blowing" in the sense that an actual fuse does, but it is permanently/irreversibly writing bits to indicate the minimum version.
FWIW, the concept here isn't exactly new - at least the Xbox 360 and a few other devices have had similar functionality[1].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.tested.com/tech/585-how-efuses-work-and-why-theyre-not-as-bad-as-you-think/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tested.com/tech/585-how-efuses-work-and-why-theyr...</a>
>Blowing a fuse is irreversible— once it’s been set it can never be undone.<p>Sounds impossible, until you find out that if you don't blow them hard enough you can get fuse re-flow under hot conditions. Good fun to debug.<p>In theory (untested to my knowledge), if you super cool the chip you could lower the resistance of the fuse and prevent it from blowing and absorb heat around the fuse, but it's probably not all that practical for casual game players.<p>As for getting to the problem at hand (force downgrading your system), some potential solutions (nothing easy):<p>* Careful control over the chip's power and you could perform a power supply timing attack, tricking the processor logic. This seems like a bit of a stab in the dark though.<p>* Assuming the bootloader is loaded into some form of RAM, you could look towards modifying the RAM as the chip boots to contain some kind of "skip" code for set pins. Game consoles have hardly been beyond the realm of needing mod-chips to access different features...<p>* The other option would be to replace the chip containing the bootloader with a non-upgraded one.
>It’s theoretically possible to physically modify the SoC and replace the fuses, but it’s so prohibitively invasive and expensive that it’s not a real option.<p>Are there any examples of this being done? Not necessarily on the Switch, just with these sorts of fuses. It can be really interesting to see people repair SoCs, like in this iPhone repair: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nap0gtds5tQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nap0gtds5tQ</a>
Seems like you could still "downgrade" via an upgrade:<p>1. Disable firmware digital signature verification (not sure if this is at the hardware level or not)<p>2. Modify the older firmware such that its reported version is newer than your current version<p>3. "upgrade" to the older firmware version
Maybe for their next console they could wire the case so it will destroy some crypto chips when anyone attempts to open it. Another idea might be to wire in a radio clock with a set date in the future that causes a over voltage in the SoC, that could be more accurate than to rely on the obsolescence of the glued in battery. Also I think they should learn from Sim City (2013), I know EA eventually released a patch that put the server side single player code in the client again, but Nintendo should learn from that mistake.<p>But with all seriousness, Nintendo really should learn from the failures in their past, I mean come-on! I can <i>still</i> play Zelda on my original Game Boy Pocket I can even replace the batteries without any tools, come on what were they thinking!<p>/edit although.. I do like that you damage the switch everytime you put it in the dock, must give them that