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</gallery>'''Acer Cloud Technology''' (formerly known as '''iGware''', '''𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝑶𝒏''', and '''RouteFree''') is a software engineering company that contributed to hardware, software, and online platform development for several of Nintendo's consoles. It was launched in April 2000 as RouteFree, and was subsequently renamed to BroadOn in 2003 and iGware in 2009. The company merged with Acer in 2011 with a $320 million deal and became Acer Cloud Computing. It was a privately held startup company, with 50 employees at its peak. The company was founded by a Chinese-American entrepreneur named [[Wei Yen]] who had previously worked on the N64 and GameCube hardware development teams at [[Silicon Graphics]] and [[ArtX]] respectively.

</gallery>'''Acer Cloud Technology''' (formerly known as '''iGware''', '''BroadOn''' (stylized as '''𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝑶𝒏'''), and '''RouteFree''') is a software engineering company which contributed to hardware, software, and online platform development for several of Nintendo's consoles. It was launched in April 2000 as RouteFree, and was subsequently renamed to BroadOn in 2003 and iGware in 2009. The company merged with Acer in 2011 with a $320 million deal and became Acer Cloud Computing. Prior to the merger with Acer, RouteFree/BroadOn/iGware contributed to a number of Nintendo's software and hardware projects, assisting with the design and development of the [[iQue Player]], Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and other hardware/software projects (some unreleased).

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RouteFree was founded by Chinese-American entrepreneur Dr. Wei Yen, who previously worked at [[Silicon Graphics]] on the Nintendo 64 development team, before starting [[ArtX]] to assist with the development of the GameCube then forming RouteFree to assist with Nintendo's future projects.

 

RouteFree's office was originally in Palo Alto, California (which is now used as the offices for Nest, a Google brand) and then moved to Mountain View, California (which is now used for a school owned by Khan Academy called [https://khanlabschool.org/ Khan Lab School]).

 

 

It is unknown why RouteFree was renamed to BroadOn. It was changed again from BroadOn to iGware, most likely due to a lawsuit between Broadcom and BroadOn, possibly relating to their name and/or the chip manufacturing business. (Both companies worked on the Wii.)

==Contributions to Nintendo products==

==Contributions to Nintendo products==

BroadOn's influence on Nintendo products dates as far back as 2002, when development on the [[iQue Player]] begun; at this point, BroadOn still used the RouteFree name. However, prior to this, BroadOn's founder [[Wei Yen]] had contributed to the hardware development of the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo GameCube, which is why BroadOn was selected by Nintendo for new hardware platform development. BroadOn contributed heavily to the hardware and software development of the iQue Player, creating its SDK and e-commerce services. In April 2018, the scene release group SUXXORS released the iQue Player SDK and plain-text iQue Player titles, marking the first known leak of internal BroadOn files.

RouteFree's first known contribution to Nintendo's products was assisting in the development of the [[iQue Player]], a Nintendo 64-based console intended for the Chinese market. The iQue Player featured rewritable storage and a basic online/e-commerce infrastructure, leading RouteFree to engineer an infrastructure design which would later be reused (to some extent) for all of Nintendo's future consoles up to the present day. In 2003, shortly before the release of the iQue Player, RouteFree changed their name to BroadOn. BroadOn then began working on 2 additional projects for iQue, both of which were unannounced and never released; the [[iQue NetCard]], a Game Boy Advance cartridge with network support and rewritable storage, and the [[iQue Box]], a successor to the iQue Player based on GameCube hardware. Ultimately, both of these projects were cancelled and the work done on them (particularly the NetCard) was shifted over to the Wii project (then known as [[NNGC]]).

 

BroadOn went on to develop much of the Wii's software infrastructure and some of its hardware, providing the [[IOP]] (commonly known as "Starlet") unit inside the Wii's GPU package as well as its software environment, [[IOS]]. This provides the backbone for most of the Wii's features which were not present in the GameCube, such as wireless connectivity and flash memory access. BroadOn also developed most of the Wii's e-commerce infrastructure, with [[Wii Shop Channel]] and [[Nintendo DSi Shop]] pages containing references to Acer Cloud Technology as they had been updated to extend their copyright up to 2014.

 

Some of BroadOn's code related to the [[ES]] [[IOS]] module was included as part of a project they did as Acer Cloud, and was subsequently published on GitHub, exposing a small piece of IOS source code as well as some unused features. [https://github.com/iversonjimmy/acer_cloud_wifi_copy]

 

BroadOn contributed to the DSi's e-commerce environment, which uses a similar system to that of the Wii.

 

BroadOn also designed the software infrastructure for the 3DS and Wii U.

 

While BroadOn's successor did not have any direct influence in the development of the Nintendo Switch or later platforms, the software concepts which they introduced as early as the iQue Player still remain in Nintendo's latest software environments.

BroadOn made several security mistakes in the software which they developed for the iQue and Wii. One such example is the [[Trucha Bug]]. They made a number of critical security mistakes in the iQue Player's software, as well as introducing several security flaws into the Wii's [[IOS]].

BroadOn also contributed to the development of the 3DS and Wii U, changing their name to [[iGware]] during this; less is known about their contributions to the 3DS and Wii U, and as the company merged with Acer and stopped working with Nintendo during the Wii U's development and shortly after the release of the 3DS, their overall contribution to the 3DS and Wii U was less than that of the Wii.

When BroadOn merged with Acer Cloud Computing, the NUS service they made was reused for deploying cloud apps for Acer devices. The domain they use on SOAP requests is "nus.wsapi.broadon.com".

During the [[Zammis Clark Breach]], a number of files from BroadOn's development repositories which were archived by Nintendo were leaked to the public, including development files for the Wii, NetCard, and iQue Player.

[[Category:Wii]]

[[Category:Wii]]