Nintendo has just released a couple of firmware updates that is sure to get some people’s blood boiling.

The two pronged assault against piracy target’s the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DSi (and the DSi XL).  The updates are listed as Firmware Version 4.3 for the Wii and Firmware version 1.4.1U for the DSi.

Both updates are meant to do the same thing for both consoles, disable homebrew (or in this case, hinder pirates from playing illegitimate copies of games).

These updates are underhandedly announced by Nintendo as to “provide behind-the-scenes improvements to system performance.” After installing the update however, the real purpose of the update is to wipe your consoles of anything that’ll allow homebrew on it.

In the case of the Wii, the v4.3 update will wipe the HomeBrew Channel (HBC) as well utilities like WiiFlow. For the DSi, it simply blocks carts (which as I’ve mentioned before, the DSi is just a firmware update away from being cart free).

For those worried about their DSi here’s a list of affected carts:

Acekard 2i, Supercard, DSTwo, M3i Zero, iPlayer and the DSTTi

EZ-Flash Vi, iSmart DS and Hyper R4i are reported to still be working

If you don’t want to be hindered by these updates, there’s only one thing you can do. Don’t update :).

source: GBATemp

This is similar to the 5.03 firmware version limit on the PSP-3000 and selected PSP-2000 models.