Wrapping up 2025 strong with some current and upcoming developments ranging from the Dreamcast all the way up to the PS4! We discuss the latest developments with the upcoming hard drive based Xbox 360 softmod, as well as give a ton of love to the Dreamcast with some impossible port builders and even modern software such as GIMP supporting the Dreamcast in the modern day. The original Xbox gets some love with the upcoming release of the Kratos board, plus the entire family of DS consoles get the gift of the DSpico. There's also a TON of PS4 news here! From the release of a BD-JB based jailbreak working up to 12.52, a tease of another BD-JB based entrypoint working up to 13.02, a whole different entrypoint in the form of the PlayStation Vue application, and even a port of the Netflix entrypoint! Oh yeah, and a CFW enabled PSP takes front and center stage at a WWE event.

Starting off with the original Xbox getting a new cosmetic hardmod to introduce power and eject button sounds, as well as a return to form with XBMC4XBOX Redux's release. We also discuss the latest Atmosphere CFW update as it contains some pretty important information for CFW users thanks to the latest system firmware update. The PS4 and PS5 get a lot more love thanks to a new kernel exploit release working on both systems. There's also a few entry points which have gotten awesome developments with Y2JB being paired with Lapse for a full jailbreak, as well as new entry points being seen with the Netflix app and now games using the Ren'py engine!

Xbox-Scene's Modfest returns for the second time! Participate in some friendly competition, maybe win some prizes, and help the community with some innovations all in one go! Aside from that announcement, RXDK gets some more love with its own Neighborhood release spanning across all major operating systems. Clone Hero gets a homebrew port to the Xbox 360, and even more love for the sake of customization comes with a really helpful Aurora skin making guide. Even the Xbox One and Series get some coverage here with the open source release of the ASPECT2 PCB! It isn't all Xbox centric news around here though, especially with the release of Y2JB for PS5. The GameCube also gets some love thanks to the release of Cubiboot. Finally, 'tis the season for spooky games, and why not celebrate it with an integrated randomizer for the classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night?

Tons of scenes heating up this month as the weather cools down! We discuss a new update to the modified original Xbox backwards compatibility files for the Xbox 360, now with individual games being able to be configured with additional fixes. Insignia Live gives us an awesome progress update regarding support for EA titles and a bit about the Xbox 360 side of house. Speaking of the Xbox 360, we get two major pieces of news! One being the release of ABadAvatar, a new entrypoint for Bad Update that no longer requires any game to load it. SSD support is now available for all consoles, including totally stock retail systems! Anyone wanting to know about BadWDSD gets a taste of what the developers have been cooking up in the background for the last few months. The PS5 gets a bit of love with Kstuff being updated to work up to 9.60, with more to come it seems! The Switch has a few projects highlighted for it, along with the Pokémon mini handheld of all things, and an awesome preservation accomplishment has been achieved for the arcade build of Soul Calibur 2!

Only a single topic being covered for this episode, but this was big enough to warrant a quick ModChat to discuss the excitement around this announcement. Grimdoomer has accomplished the impossible and achieved yet another milestone in the world of game console reverse engineering by showing evidence of a real softmod! No RGH, no JTAG, no Bad Update. Seeing is believing, so see for yourself!

Starting off this month with PicoLoader being released for the GameCube, an open-source project which utilizes the power of a Raspberry Pi Pico and intercepts the DVD drive to quickly load a piece of homebrew such as Swiss. We also see some awesome releases for the PS4, allowing for some pretty quick and stable jailbreaks up to firmware 12.02! DIY Game Boy cartridges, custom soundtracks for the original Xbox, and the dramatic improvements to Bad Update on Xbox 360 all get some highlights in this episode. Oh, and we could start saying the Switch can handle optical media, more on that at the end.

Starting off with some Switch 2 news this month, the same month the Switch 2 released! We discuss a Day 1 Userland ROP Chain demonstrated on the Switch 2, the bans using MiG Flash cartridges, the beginnings of a microSD Express adapter, and get clarification on how far SciresM will support the Switch 2's homebrew scene. In Xbox centric news, rumors regarding an Xbox Classics program are clarified, along with a program similar to Cheat Engine being ported to the Xbox 360, and some awesome patches are shown to run the original Xbox's Dashboard at native 720p! Every model of the PS2 can now officially take on a Memory Card based entrypoint thanks to the release of ProtoPwn. PSP users get some love with BatterySteve to help with some aging and misleading batteries out there.

A ton of awesome releases and advancements in this month's ModChat! First comes the release of the Lapse Kernel Exploit for both PS4 12.02 and PS5 10.05 firmwares. BadHTAB for the PS3 evolves into BadWDSD, a separate but better and more exciting development for PS3 owners allowing further access now on Super Slim variants! The original Xbox revision 1.6 gets a huge development as well, now with the ability to reflash the on-board BIOS for the first time. We touch up on some Switch news for the first time in a while, with a new Atmosphere CFW update for the latest Switch firmware, but not all good news when we discuss the EULA changes. However, some reverse engineering efforts towards the WaveBird receiver, Mario Party 4, Mario Kart 64, and even Dinosaur Planet have all released this month!

A whole lot has happened since the last episode of ModChat, and there's still been a few topics not covered within this episode! For the ones we do go into, the first is covering some major progress on the PlayStation Home revival project Home Laboratory, which is now available by default on the XMB for the latest PS3HEN and Evilnat CFW users on PS3! The PS3 also gets some renewed Hypervisor related interest in the form of BadHTAB, which is based on old HTAB related work from geohot and has been worked on here again in 2025. The Xbox 360 side of house gets more love, with Sonic Unleashed being ported to PC thanks to XenonRecomp, both of which have been released. The OG Xbox gets a fancy new payload in the form of Skeleton Key which serves as a Swiss Army Knife for stock OG Xbox users to run and quickly have several powerful tools available on their screen with minimal effort. Finally, a new FATXplorer tool releases in the form of XDON, allowing for easy Xbox and Xbox 360 drive mounting over a network.

At last the long awaited Xbox 360 Hypervisor exploit shown by Grimdoomer has arrived in the form of Bad Update! This means that unsigned code can be run on any Xbox 360 up to Kernel/Dashboard 17559 using only a USB drive and the NTSC version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. This does not require any other modifications to be done to the hardware and can be performed on an unopened and unmodified console, making this the first software-only exploit available for the latest system software version! As this episode will only be focused on Bad Update, we walk through where this started from Tony Hawk's Pro Strcpy, read through a couple of blog posts Grimdoomer made leading up to the release, and of course we set up and try Bad Update for ourselves before giving some final thoughts.