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Despite there having been Wii modchips for quite a while it by no means unlocked the full potential of the Wii but a couple of days ago at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress, a delightful meeting of hackers and other hardcore tinkerers, Michael Steil and Felix Domke demonstrated the work they had been doing with the Wii as you can see in the video above.

Beyond the technical mumbo-jumbo they were able to extract the security keys for running code on the Wii and therefore enabled the user to run homebrew software on the console. Although at the most basic level of development right now this means that free Wii homebrew is now a reality and might render better fruits before Nintendo’s WiiWare does. As of now the most popular console on the market is wide open and now anything is possible.

• Did you want to use a hard drive through your USB port? Now its possible.
• Did you want to turn your Wii into a media center? Now its possible.
• Geek enough to want Linux on your Wii? Now its possible.
• Wanted to play old GCN games with your wiimote? Now its possible.
• Wanted to synch your Wii to your PC? Now its possible.
• Dreamed of some hot Wii on DS action? Now its possible.

While this is old news for other consoles the Wii enjoys massive user base and its hardware is cheap making hackers and would-be coders more likely to work on projects. Remember when the iPod was finally cracked? Well this is pretty much that all over again. Just give it some months folks, things are about to get fun.