Currently I have some spare time to waste, thus I had a more closer look at (unofficial) developments around my favorite game console: The Nintendo Wii.
Nintendo has done a great job while developing this piece of hardware and esp. motion controllers - which is prooven by their business stats and sales counts. But... what is possible now because Nintendo hasen't developed (or at least released) own products / fireware features?

Just a short list - all this is possible now without any hardware modifications like a modchip:

• DVD playback: Yep, the Wii has a DVD drive and no support for watching DVD movies. Sounds strange? Maybe Nintendo saves some ct while not buying a license? Nevertheless this is one of the most logical enhancements which were implemented - simply by porting the famous MPlayer (and a special lib ;-) )to the Wii.
  
• USB-Storage support: Two USB ports on the back and everything which could officially conencted is a keyboard. Well...inofficially any USB stick or hdd is used.
• Speed up game loading: By dumping the games to HDD one also hasn't to change the DVD within the drive :-)
• SDHC-support: Officially just SD cards within the front slot are supported, but inofficially any (cheaper and bigger) SDHC is working.
  
• Homebrew capabilities: A huge, huge range off games has been ported to the Wii as open source or at least for free. The development of executing own code at the Wii's processor was definetly ths foundation for everything else.
  
• ... many many more details.