Originally Posted by
e3NiNe
Hotline? I might need a reminder ... this doesn't quite ring a bell. :thinking:
The Dreamcast hacking was so widely known that it killed the system. The PS2 did it's fair share of damage, but no Dreamcast owner bought games.
The PSP, Wii, 360, and PS3 are very safe. You can hack those machines, but it involves a heck of alot more than burning a cd. I'd say that the NDS is in trouble too ... but the console expands over so many demographics. Ask any male, 18 to 30 what an "R4" is and they'll tell you. Ask an 8 year old boy ... nothing. Ask a 21 year old girl .. nothing.
The Dreamcast had a narrow target market (18+ year old male) ... when that group figured out how to hack ... it was over.
Crazy that it went down like that.
Hotline was a file sharing community. People set up servers from home or a college campus, and had people sign up for subscriptions on lame sites to get a password to get in. You could download almost anything. This was around '99-'01 that I was into it. I thought maybe Dreamcast guys were setting up servers to share games.