Well, it may be a little early for anyone to actually produce a homebrew Wii game, but news just in from the 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress (24C3) is suggesting that some dedicated hackers have managed to find the encryption and decryption keys for the Wii via full memory dumps, allowing homebrewed code to be run with full access to the Wii hardware (not just Gamecube mode) for the first time. Here’s the video to prove it:

These guys are professionals, with their reputations on the line … they don’t fake stuff, so I’d say it’s all true.

This is great news … it means that in the future developers will be able to release innovative software for the Wii without requiring the direct blessing of Nintendo, and we as players will have a wider choice of independently developed games and applications.

It is a very Merry Christmas for Wii owners after all !

Via Nintendo Scene and Next Generation and WiiNintendo.