The Nintendo Switch Will NEVER Be the Same // MIG-Switch Dumper Review

This red box is going to change  the Nintendo Switch market forever,  

and after today, it will never be the same.

Hey guys, Taki here. Today, we have a huge video.  As I stated in my MIG Switch video, I think  

there's a high chance that this video is going to  get taken down. But I hope that Nintendo doesn't  

because even if you don't want to buy this thing  at all and you have no interest in it or this  

card, you need to be informed about it because its  existence can impact every Nintendo Switch owner.

And if you are not informed about  what it is and what it does,  

there are some potential negative consequences  that can come out of it. So in this video,  

I'm going to present the information that  I think both sides need to know about this,  

people that are interested in getting  this and also the people that want to  

know how they're going to navigate the  landscape now that both of these exist.

Anyway, this is the MIG Switch Dumper. It’s a  small red box with a USB Type-C port on one end,  

and a Nintendo Switch cartridge slot on the  other. And if I just get a cart for this,  

it clicks into place just  like it does on a Switch.

Without even opening it up, I'm  assuming some of the things that  

were on the PCB for this are also on this  PCB because the update files are the same.

If you want to wrap your head around  this, think of it as if it were an  

SD card reader. If you connect this to  a computer with a cartridge inserted,  

the computer would be able to read  all of the files that you would need  

to essentially create a clone of it with  the hardware solution in the Mig Switch.

These are things that were usually used  for emulators, but there's a lot of extra  

identification that is only required for when  you want to do a 1:1 clone of a card that can  

then go online. That's the most important  part of this entire thing. But we got to  

see how it works. So let's get a computer  to see what happens when we plug this in.

For our PC, we are going to go with  the Nintendo Switch. Obviously,  

this can be used in a lot of things, but  I just figured since Nintendo is already  

going to be super angry that I am doing a  video on the dumper, why not make matters  

worse for myself by showing an operating system  that they don’t even want you to be able to run.

So anyway, we have the dumper here connected  to this USB cable. There’s no cart in it right  

now, and we are just going to start by connecting  the other end of the cable to the Switch.

Once that happens, the activity light  is going to go on inside the dumper,  

and if I put my hand here, you can see that  the activity light is solid red to show that  

it's active. At the top of the screen, we  have a notification that we’ve connected a  

drive called Game Card. And if we press on  that, we can view what is on this dumper.

So far, it looks like a flash drive. Now,  the interesting thing about this is that  

the properties show that this is a 275GB drive. It  also says that it has half a gig of free storage.

I don't believe that this thing has that  much space and we'll check on that later  

when we do a teardown. I just think it’s  very interesting that they’ve done this.  

As you can see, it says that we are at  99% capacity with the drive almost full.

Inside the drive, we have a system folder. In  there, we have a single Update.S2 file. If you  

recall from my Mig Switch video, that’s the update  package. They only have one update package online,  

so I would be shocked if these do  not share the same PCB components.

If we press on that file, we can see that that is  

just basically under 300KB. I’ll go over  the update process later in the video.

As you can see right now, we don’t have anything.  This just works as a flash drive. If I disconnect  

it, that goes away. If I plug it back in, it  reconnects as a USB drive. I think everybody  

watching this has a pretty good understanding  of how a flash drive works, so we can move on.

This is where things get spicy -  finding a that I can test this with.

Most of the games that I have  are things that I know would  

cause ninjas to kick in my windows,  so I’m going to go with Minecraft.

I have two of them here, and I am going to be  

upfront about what I'm doing. If  I copy any files off this dumper,  

they will not exist after the camera shuts  off. This is not a game that I need to dump.

So let's take one of our two Minecraft  cartridges, and we are just going to put  

this into our little box and then we're  going to connect it and see what happens.

So the dumper disconnects, the activity light  goes back on, and then our game card shows back  

up. The difference this time is that we now have  a new folder. I want to go into the properties  

now to see what it says for our capacity. It still  says that we have the same amount of free space,  

but now it says we have a bunch of  items that are totaling over 900MB.

If I go inside the new folder, you can see  all of the files that you would need to be  

able to clone this card on the Mig Switch.  If we look at those, we have the ROM file,  

which is pretty small, all things  considered, at less than a gig. We  

also have the card ID set, the card UID, the  ROM certificate, and the ROM initial data.

As far as I know, this file here is the one  that is unique from every single cartridge.  

It's unique to this Minecraft cartridge. If I did  a dump of this and I analyzed this cartridge and  

then I dumped this Minecraft right here, those two  files should be different. But the initial data,  

the card UID and the card ID set and the ROM,  should be identical between the two of them.

Only the ROM certificate should be different.

What I want you to kind of internalize  is just how easy it was for me to connect  

this to my Switch to have full  access to all of these files.

Now I can make a 1:1 backup  of this card. If I did that,  

do I even need the real cartridge anymore? No.

I have enough files here to make an exact  clone of this game and use it how I see fit.

That's kind of the danger  of these two products. Now,  

does this work? And the answer to that question  is yes. And it even works in the way that it is  

connected right now. We do not even need to  copy these files over to be able to use them.

If I open he who shall not be named,  

you can see that it identifies Minecraft  as a valid game. A couple of things here.

The files that are currently in use to allow this  to happen come from this Nintendo Switch. I know  

Nintendo doesn’t care about that distinction, but  I am trying to do this as above board as possible.

If we press on the game, you can see  that the game will start to launch,  

and the activity light will change.

Now we have my OLED Switch,  

using its own files to decrypt this game  running from an external card reader.

It is so strange that this is  now possible. It’s weird that  

someone would never even need to dump  their games to be able to use them,  

and I believe you can do this across all  platforms that have a USB port and an emulator.

Anyway, here’s Minecraft running on the  Switch through emulation. I have played  

a lot of Minecraft on the Switch, and the most  disappointing thing about seeing this running  

in the way that I have here is that it even  runs better than it does under the official  

system. This is just sad. You should not be  able to get an improved gaming experience by  

running an emulator that emulates the device  that you are using to run the emulator.

I’m going to show you in just a second,  but if this was in the stock system,  

I would see a ton of pop-in as the  game loads in other parts of the world,  

but it’s running way better  than it should via emulation.

Here’s that same game under the stock  OS, and you can see exactly what I am  

talking about. This isn’t even as bad as  it can get because it’s possible to get a  

defacto loading screen while you wait for  the next chunk to load in. But I digress.

We'll have one thing left to cover when it comes  to this before we start talking about some of the  

meat of this video, and that is updating it. Let's  go over to the MiG Switch website. We can see that  

the cartridge and the dumper share a binary.  I’ve gone ahead and grabbed the latest version.

It shows up as an 80KB file.  I'm going to copy this file,  

and then I will go to the system folder to paste  it in place, overwriting the one that is there.

Now you can see that our file in this  folder is only 80KB. We're going to  

disconnect this and then reconnect it. And  now when we go back in there, you can see  

the file is back to being 272 kilobytes. So  that's how we do the update process on this.

I think the next thing people want  to see is the PCB. Before doing that,  

I’m going to open the Mig Switch card. As  a recap, they etched out the two of these,  

but I was able to identify that  one of the chips was an ESP32,  

which is a very cheap microcontroller, and  the other was a small FPGA from Lattice.

Both of these should be inside the MIG Switch  Dumper. All right. Let's disconnect the USB cable  

to start opening this up. With the thing open,  we can see that they did not etch off the labels,  

so we can get a closer look at them  after we remove the remaining screws.

And here we go, this is the Mig Switch Dumper.

And as you'll notice, we have some familiar parts  that we already talked about. Here’s the ESP32,  

which is going to fill the role of  handing IO and updating the FPGA,  

and if we flip this, here’s our Lattice  FPGA. This should be the chip that is  

responsible for interfacing with the  card to be able to rip off the data.

Essentially, it's decrypting the game files in the  same way that you do on a hacked Switch. And if  

we just get our Mig Switch, we can see this Chip  is the Lattice chip, and this one is the ESP32.

Beyond that, we just have two other  chips, along with some resistors and  

fuses. There’s not a whole lot going on  here. We do have this cartridge slot,  

and I guess this is just something  that exists as an aftermarket part on  

the repair market Switches so they were  just able to get them for this product.

Anyway, here’s the back. It’s  a very simple piece of kit,  

and this is something that shouldn’t be too  complicated given what they have on this.

I might leave the case off this because I think  the bare board looks better than the red box.

That's the whole that's the whole thing.

For this last big section, I want to talk about  the impact of this. Now that both products exist,  

I feel like I can fully outline all  of the issues that this presents.

So let's get one thing clear before we  get started. It was possible to dump  

games before this thing existed, and it'll  be possible to dump them after. The big  

difference is in what is being dumped. If  you dump a Switch game on a modded Switch,  

you’d usually just have the ROM file here,  and that would allow you to play the game  

on an emulator, or on a modded Switch  by running the game from an SD card.

From Nintendo's side, they could ban your  Switch if you were to ever play that game  

with your Switch connected to the internet. This  is why people that have modded Switches usually  

only play pirated games on their emulated  system with all of the telemetry disabled.

With this tool, we now have a use for other card  contents that can be dumped. And the one that's  

important here is that certificate file because  that's the unique file for this exact cartridge.

Before this existed, there was  never a real use for those files,  

and even though people could have dumped  those files with a modded Switch in the  

past, there was nothing they could  really do with them. Now there is.

I want to be upfront about this  with you. After I did my last video,  

I said I was going to go out and buy  a ton of Switch games that I had on  

my wish list. I bought about 15 games or  so a day after I released my last video.  

These aren’t all of them, but they were  games that I had been holding off on.

Just like with the Switch consoles that I own,  

I buy a mix of new and used games. If there’s  a game that I really want to play on release,  

then I will buy that game sealed. That would be  something like Tears of the Kingdom or Super Mario  

RPG. I bought those games on release because I  wanted to experience them when they were new.

For other games that are older that I never  got to experience, I would just buy those  

games used and before these things existed,  I never needed to worry about whether or not  

somebody had cloned any unique files that could  potentially get me screwed without me knowing.

To be able to describe the situation that  we're now in, I'm going to use Minecraft for  

this and I'm going to use it for a few  reasons that will hopefully make sense  

to you. I have two copies of this. One is  inside here, and the other is on this table.

Let's say I wanted to buy a third copy of  Minecraft and I didn't want to buy it brand  

new. If I want to buy this game now, and  this is typically a game that want to use  

online that you could use online, I now  need to worry about whether or not there  

is a certificate file from the game that I'm  buying that has been dumped on the Internet,  

or that somebody has made a copy of  that they're running from a Mig Switch.

That's one worry that I have to have. And if  you think that people aren't going to do this,  

you are sorely mistaken because there's  a lot of discussion already from people  

that want to go out and buy new  Switch games just to dump them  

before returning them to a store after  they get the files that they need.

If those people go online with their clone, and  you go online with your game, that certificate  

file will go to Nintendo and they can see there  are two consoles or more using the same unique ID.

Nintendo hasn't said how they're going to handle  this situation, but they can’t sit back because  

this will cause a lot of lost revenue for  them. I wish that they would say something  

because this is not a good situation for Nintendo  Switch owners to be in. So now in this situation,  

if I want to buy this thing used, I have to  ask the seller, have you dumped this game?

And I have to hope that they have been honest.  Now, if they were the original owner of the game,  

it’s easier to track the chain of custody because  I just have to ask one person, but if many people  

have owned the same game, that’s way too risky.  Because now you have to hope that multiple people  

didn’t clone a cert file while they had  their hands on the game that you now own.

Now that is just if someone wants to use the game  on the Mig Switch. If you are a Switch owner,  

it is not going to come as a surprise  that the used prices on Switch games  

are kind of high. The official price  for new games is also kind of high.

There is now a huge incentive for people to take a  

game that has a high resale value and  just clone it with a fake cartridge  

using the hardware solution that now  exists with this Mig Switch design.

If people have the ability to turn out  near identical clones of official games,  

then the entire used market  just becomes super shady.

Let's take let's take these two games,  for example. These are the used prices  

for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the  Kingdom where I live. As you can see,  

they aren’t that cheap, especially for  a game as old as Breath of the Wild.

If we take the hardware on the MIG Switch as an  example, we have an FPGA that is going to set  

you back $2-3 in volume, as well as an ESP32 that  can go for between $2-4 depending on the model.

If we include all of the passive components  that are on this board and take into account  

the cost to get it fabricated, you are  looking at like a $7 PCB. You could  

then add some storage on the board, get a good  sticker, and a nice shell to have a full clone.

Now, when you want to go buy something from the  second-hand market, it would be very difficult  

for you to know at a glance if you're buying  an authentic Switch game because they could  

do such a good job that you won't know unless  you opened it up. That's going to be a huge  

problem going forward because now you're going  to have to worry about counterfeits and it's  

something that we didn't need to worry about  for the entire lifespan of the Nintendo Switch.

So I presented two situations to you, one  where there's an incentive for people to  

now clone cartridges of games with high  resale values, but they could even do this  

for a current release. That's going to have  a huge impact on the entire Switch ecosystem.

The cynical side of this is, well,  

Nintendo is going to be happy about this  because this will just blow up the used  

game market and cause people to only buy  new games. I don’t know if I believe that.

Going forward, I am going to have to get used  to asking sellers if they have ever dumped  

the files from their games now that these both  exist. I think that fully explains this title.

Anyway, that’s it for this review  of the Mig Switch Dumper. It does  

what it sets out to do, but  it does have some downsides.

If you enjoyed this video and you  want to see another, take a look at  

my big video on the Nintendo Switch in  2024. Happy gaming everyone, Taki out.