Reported recently by a number of sites, including technology magazine T3, it seems Nintendo have tried to block the gaps and stop the pirates.

"The games giant has quietly slipped new motherboards into its consoles, narrowing the gap between critical solder points to less than a millimetre. It means soldering on mod chips requires superhuman dexterity, and inexperienced modders risk short circuiting the console and writing it off for good."

If the industry has learnt anything from the past, this change of design might slow down the modders for a short period, but ultimately they'll come up with a new work around.

[source t3.co.uk]