3DS hacked in seconds

Within a few minutes of the 3DS console being in the shops in the Land of the Rising Sun, a video appeared on YouTube which showed the beast being hacked.

Nintendo is believed to have spent a fortune trying to lock in the 3DS and limit what it could do. However, if the video is real, it is a walk in the park to break into the console and do what you like. In fact the hackers appear to have made the 3DS even more appealing once it is hacked.

The YouTube video posted by the R4i group showed hackers who have managed to get the 3DS to run older, pirated DS games using a third-party flash memory cartridge.

The hackers claimed that they have been able to modify the 3DS's built-in 'white list' to allow the machine to use the R4 memory cart.

Nintendo may not be too worried about the hack at the moment. The release of the 3DS has been a big success for Japanese video games giant Nintendo. Of 400,000 consoles made available to retailers for the launch, 371,326 units were sold on the first two days of release.

However comments posted on the video suggest that the hack could push the European launch date back as Nintendo try to fix the security breach.

R4i expect Nintendo to release an update blocking third-party memory carts before we see the gear in the EU.

However the question remains as to whether it is worth a company's while to lock in users into Jobs' Mobesque walled gardens when they can be eventually breached by clever coders. When the great unwashed is never going to try and jailbreak anything, there will always be a small number who want to do something clever with their machines that others can't. Playing cat and mouse games with them usually comes at the expense of the ordinary user.