I wasnt baiting you into anything. I wasnt even planning on debating. All I said was you can't back expectations of one console off of what happened on another console. Then any point you made about why they were similar I tried to counter-argue. For me and Nintendo the switch is the wii u replacement not the 3ds replacement. Hence why I listed that as the difference.
I'm sorry if you take it as condescending, but I'm not going to let you make arguments against my point when they are factually not correct (or mostly not correct). And I didn't explain networking in simple terms because I thought you were stupid, I did it because theres a lot going on at multiple hardware and software levels with technical jargon you wouldn't understand. As someone getting a degree in networking I understand more how networks operate.
As I understand it the switch is a device with a kernel, seemingly one which abstracts networking away from the end user and follows the OSI model your beloved CCNA will likely have drilled into you.
My favourite 1999 article still applies to network game design, mainly as physics still applies.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131781/the_internet_sucks_or_what_i_.php
Many game servers will do remote storage for obvious reasons (though looking at the PS3 post c3 presentation, and seemingly some aspects of PS4 they have not quite learned that lesson, and Nintendo is even worse than that -- see all the various failings of 3ds pokemon for their general level of incompetence*) but with enough observation it is not so hard.
*my favourite being pokemon battles wherein they sent a plaintext version of the opposing team's selection to the opponent prior to them confirming theirs. See also pokemon battle analyser. Does any of their present network setup inspire confidence in their competence?
Most modern game servers then are glorified multicast systems, and their main flirtation with statefulness is scoreboards, stats and score profiles (and from a functionality perspective you can probably get away with a replay). Even for something which kind of has to be stateful like a MMO can often be figured out with analysis (it is still a multicast server but the interactions remain over longer periods than a session). Given running a server with storage and computation is quite expensive most games will avoid such requirements.
If there is local LAN play on a system then assuming it uses normal network protocols (as far as we can tell it is fairly off the shelf this time which tends to make more interesting lower level stuff, like the DS nifi headerless wifi stuff, harder to do than when you might have had your own silicon) then if you can pipe that over a VPN you have free internet play after a fashion. In the past we have seen deliberately ping limited protocols (later bypassed at the kernel level, and only needed in the hosts) which might trouble that but it is still worth investigating, and even then assuming they have any kind of tolerance for dropped packets you can probably play with your schoolfriends that are likely on the same internet exchange as you. Likewise I have seen dongle/black box/oracle type setups used but did not see much of an option here for anything beyond the handshake -- they are not going to pump a full network pipe through trustzone.
I would agree if we were discussing failures and bypass methods of individual security -- the 360 uses an encrypted memory model, and even checks its security. Fantastic if we are talking
about the 360, probably useless here other than to say it has existed in the wild before now. I also agree many of the methods are useless -- there is a reason we saw new models developed to bypass on Windows at least DEP, ASLR (the JIT spray), UAC... right up to why we have return oriented and the earlier stages of counters for that today. I am certainly not going to suggest would be switch hackers invest in some JTAG debugging gear as there does not appear to be any evidence such a thing would be useful.
This however is not that and as mentioned the unstated assumption is we will have kernel and custom game level access, something which does not seem the furthest off at this point, rather than sky3ds or 360 DVD hacks style game replication which early work says likely not. At which point you are down to redirecting traffic if such things are annoyingly hardcoded (back to the 3ds pokemon thing it was hilarious watching ARP poisoning play out on the forums so those suffering modern windows and might just allow you to change SSID home routers could sniff some packets; raw sockets went away I think with windows XP SP2), faking a few scoreboard/handshake protocols (which if you have kernel and thus any cert access you can watch in plaintext a whole bunch of times) and then either dead reckoning the responses or going a bit more in depth if it is more than multicast. A lobby system might be nice but you can abstract that away to a PC or phone or something which is running your custom DNS/redirect (all those LAN play things did this just fine). If they mine the kernel and the game with some obfuscated checks then that sucks but if you have kernel and game level access that is just time, and as they still have to maintain a workable system there is a limit on the amount which can be done. Maybe rare and actually quite bad Japanese mahjong title does not get the treatment but your mario karts, splatoons, monster hunters and the popular stuff will, at which point you have won in the eyes of the flash cart/emulator/custom firmware community.
A question of will emulation reach that point before the switch is done, will we see modified games on official servers and will we see modified consoles on official servers is up for debate. The mere question of the feasibility of some kind of alt path online play* not so much, and actually justifiable to ask about if you are more the guide following type than either the hacking or network deploying/coding type.
*what most mean when they say free online, what with hacking into account management for a service being beyond the pale for any console hacking site I have ever seen -- there may be differences on piracy, overt piracy, scene names, being online on modified devices, being online on modified devices which allow for a measure of cheating and actively making cheats for said same, what is probably going to be some flavour of fraud, theft of services or serious computer hacking charges anywhere in the world is going to be pretty unanimously blocked.
