So humor me for a second as I haven't actually followed the homebrew scene of any other console similar to the Wii in terms of external peripheral options, namely USB support in this case.
How difficult is it to go in and write/compile drivers for non-Ninty sanctioned usb peripherals? This means anything from usb audio devices, GPRS modems, etc.. I would hazard a guess this is fairly trivial for any homebrew app barring the current state of usb bus access in the homebrew environment.
What about writing support into the IOS for possible first-party (system menu, wiiware titles, games, etc..) integration?
An idea actually came through my head and it's more of a 'would be cool just because' idea and that was to write a GPRS modem specific driver which under the IOS would be emulated as a wired NIC with ppp dialing and ip address retrieval being automated in the driver. Or on the side of a more reasonable and accepted idea: Introduce the ability of using a generic usb gamepad in place of the classic controller/gamecube controller with button mapping customized through a homebrew channel based application?
I know this is all really far-fetched already so I don't need that point rehashed here. I'm mostly curious on the general idea of inserting custom written peripheral drivers into the core system to be used by games/the system menu/etc. I'm still trying to learn a bit on how some of the core functions of the whole system work.