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Line 1: − [[File:Logo-Acer.png|200px|thumb|Acer logo.]]+ − [[File:Logo-iGware.png|200px|thumb|iGware logo.]]+ − [[File:Logo-BroadOn.png|200px|thumb|BroadOn logo.]]+ − [[File:Logo-RouteFree.png|200px|thumb|RouteFree logo.]]+ + + + − '''Acer Cloud Technology''' (their acquisitions 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 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. It was a privately held startup company, with 50 employees at its peak.+ − __TOC__+ − − + − == Name change ==+ − 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.+ − == Contributions to Nintendo products ==+ − + − 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.+ − + + − BroadOn had some influence in the development of the 3DS' and Wii U's software/e-commerce infrastructure (as iGware), although it is unknown to what extent they were involved due to the 2011 Acer merger. + − 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.+ − + − == Security Issues == − − BroadOn and Nintendo have been known to make some pretty bad mistakes in their software. The most famous is the [[Trucha Bug]]. − − == Domain == − 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", and continued to be used even after they were called iGware.+ − + − [[Category:Wii]] +
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File:Logo-Acer.png
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</gallery>'''Acer Cloud Technology,''' formerly known as '''iGware''', '''BroadOn''' (stylized as '''𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝑶𝒏'''), and '''RouteFree (stylized as 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, DSi and 3DS, as well as other unreleased projects such as the [[iQue Box]] and [[iQue NetCard]].
RouteFree was founded by Chinese-American entrepreneur Dr. Wei Yen, who previously worked at [[Silicon Graphics]] on the Nintendo 64 development team. He then started [[ArtX]] to develop graphics hardware for PC motherboard chipsets, and was asked by Nintendo to assist with the development of the GameCube; after ArtX was bought out by [[ATI]], he formed RouteFree to assist with Nintendo's future projects.
==Contributions to Nintendo products==
== Location ==
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]).
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.
Additionally, some code contributions and opened issues made by RouteFree/BroadOn in the early 2000s point to them working on a Linux-based environment for PowerPC devices featuring multimedia and peer-to-peer networking. It is unknown what the significance of this was or if it was related to their work with Nintendo.
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 then assisted in the design of the software and hardware for the Wii console, in collaboration with Nintendo and [[ATI]]; their contributions to the Wii include [[IOS]], the [[Hollywood]] chip, and the [[Wii Shop Channel]].
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 and only known leak of internal BroadOn files.
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.
While Acer Cloud Technology now works on projects exclusively for Acer and is no longer involved with Nintendo, the infrastructure which they designed for Nintendo products reaching back as far as the [[iQue Player]] in 2003 is still being updated and improved on by Nintendo and is currently used for the Nintendo Switch.
BroadOn contributed to the DSi's e-commerce environment as well, although their role in the DSi's overall software infrastructure is unknown, but the system works similar to the Wii.
==Zammis Clark Leaks==
''Main page: [[BroadOn data dumps]]''
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.
Prior to this, some of BroadOn's source code was (possibly unintentionally) released on GitHub during the open sourcing of an Acer Cloud project; this exposed details about internal projects which were later expanded upon by the leaks.<ref>https://github.com/iversonjimmy/acer_cloud_wifi_copy/tree/master/sw_x/gvm_core/internal/es_types/include</ref>
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