this is how stupid, self centered, petty, controlling, and anti-consumer, anti-fan Nintendo is.
They’d rather incur the costs of running two assemblies side by side, than simply give everyone access to a means of easily repair their switch.
They’d rather spend tons of extra money, than do anything beneficial for someone they arent forced by law to give it to.
How long do you think it’ll take before Nintendo adds a software check so you can’t have the European version outside of Europe beyond short term travel?
Good thing too, I’ve a Vita and gameboy micro that both need new batteries and are otherwise perfect, I can’t seem to get the batteries delivered to Northern Ireland (been like that since Brexit).
User replaceable batteries might actually be sold in big stores and are easier all round they never should have went away.
I was considering buying a switch 2 for a couple of the exclusives, despite my prior beliefs, but this confirms that I shouldn’t have even considered it
fuck you Nintendo, stop disrespecting me as a customer
Why only EU though?
Because only the EU is legally requiring it
They’re not willing to give a pinky to other countries. They’d rather have two assembly lines. I hope the law spreads, followed by the same happeningto Nintendo’s butthole.
You can’t fucking replace the batteries on switches?!
Why do you assholes buy these consoles? Seriously.
Probably because of Mario and Zelda. Which is 100% legit.
because myopic little gremlins care more about their instant gratification and newest shinies than anything else.
but don’t worry, once the new wears off, they’ll go back to pointing out the flaws and “hating” the company just like everyone else.
On Switch 1 it’s not too hard, but the 2 is glued shut.
Calm down honey
For everyone who thought eu legislation would force corporations make better stuff globally, that’s how much they care about you.
And people still buying from nintendo is really disappointing
It does it’s just Nintendo going out of their way to be awkward even to their own detriment.
Look at Apple, everyone gets USB-C iPhones now they could have made a USB-C version for the European market and a mag-safe port for other markets but that would have meant two different power boards and different body designs but each market which wasn’t worth it. Nintendo however have decided to actually put the cost into making two different body moulds and two different circuit boards one for non-replaceable batteries and one for replaceable batteries.
Nintendo have been anti-consumer for a long time but I’m surprised that they’re willing to waste money on it.
cough cough … app store…
I thought EU legislation would make better stuff in the EU and it has.
I mean the main point right now is to make stuff better for ourselves but there are examples of others benefitting from our legislation like the case of usb-c. Individual governments also help, like germany spending money on linux development and adopting it on government system in certain states.
It’s only making it more expensive for themselves. They want to have two production lines for two separate models… Well that effects their profit margin.
See, it’s worth so much to screw over consumers
Is it though or is this just them being spiteful?
How often do the batteries in the non-user replaceable version fail, they can’t have the failure rate be too high or else word would get around. So they’re doing this against the cost of some theoretical future benefit may very well not come to pass. I suspect this decision hasn’t been properly costed out.
It’s quite obviously cheaper to not make it replaceable, otherwise they would do it globally. Companies are not that spiteful when it comes to money. The battery is probably already theoretically replaceable by repair shops with special tool or whatever, there was just an opening in the hull missing. So it’s likely just one or two pieces that have to be manufactured differently, the rest can stay the same.
Maintaining two product lines simply out of spite really is just such a Nintendo thing to do.
Well, Sega did the same with the Megadrive and the various shapes of the cartridges to prevent you from playing games that came from another country (but yes, Nintendo did the same with the Super Nintendo).
Not just spite. It also proves they profit more from proprietary repairs than it costs to maintaining both production lines.
I have never and will never pay for a Nintendo product because of shit like this. Doesn’t mean you can’t play Nintendo games though 🏴☠️
Fuck Nintendo.
yep.
I’ve not given Nintendo money for a long ass time, because of their idiotic insistence on choosing the most selfish, customer hating path at every fork in the road they come to.
It’s the Apple approach: Implement consumer-friendly policies only in regions that require it by law. Apple mostly do it with software though, for example only allowing third-party app stores in EU and Japan.
Plenty of US companies do something similar with subscriptions too. California mandates that any subscription you create online must also be cancellable online, and so some companies (like New York Times, SiriusXM, gyms) only show their simple online cancelation flow to Californians. Everyone else must jump through hoops like use live chat, call them, cancel in person, etc.
The midlife revision will probably just have a user-replaceable battery for all regions to simplify things.
Then again, it’s Nintendo.
Nintendo makes the first version of all of their products deliberately mid just so the second version can be considered to be an upgrade, when everybody else would just consider the second version to be what they should have made from the beginning.
It’s like the OLED switch, why didn’t they just make the first version OLED? There hasn’t been a significant cost reduction in that area lately, so it’s not as if it’s suddenly cheaper to put one in.
OLED costs more than LCD, significantly so, so to keep costs down they used LCD. Pretty simple really. OLED also has various issues that LCD doesn’t have that mean it won’t last anywhere near as long as an LCD screen does.
I love OLED screens, but after my $3k LG OLED tv started showing the PUBG UI every time there was red on the screen where the UI was, I’ve switched back to LCD for gaming and am not regretting it.
Making a stock version followed by a premium version isn’t that odd. There are plenty of things Nintendo does with their systems that I generally agree with you on, but OLED vs LCD is not it.
Nintendo really dropping the ball at every opportunity. Life long Nintendo fan here and I’ll never buy anything from them ever again.
Last Nintendo console I’ll ever buy is a used New Nintendo 3DS XL which I’ve modded with Homebrew and all that and loaded with emulators with tons of ROMs. It’s a fantastic piracy machine that runs NES, SNES, SMS, GEN/SMD, N64, PSX, GB, GBC, GBA, DS, DSi, and 3DS games!
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I love Nintendo. I’ve bought every single one of their consoles. I am skipping the Switch 2 though.
I feel like giving someone a Switch 2 is a bit like a white elephant. I can’t say that I’m a fan of what’s happening lately. It’s a shame because the industry is where it is because of them. It’s a shame they can’t treat their customers a little better.
I used to be loyal to Nintendo
No idea why anyone still supports them after the joycons were never really fixed on switch 1
The joycons are egregiously priced. Doing any sort of fix on them is a massive pain in the arse. I hadn’t used my Switch in a while, it was packed away in its (official) carrying case, inside a box that’s kept in a decent environment. The joysticks had melted.
I bought replacement joysticks, with hall effect sensors, for €15. Two batteries for €10. Pain in the arse to replace, but it’s possible. The new joysticks even have exchangeable caps so if they melt again for some reason, you can just pop them off.
Nintendo intentionally designs things to be shit, so you can buy new joycons at insane prices. It’s why they also offer them in limited collections and whatnot.
Honestly this only really started this with the Switch. Every Nintendo controller besides the N64’s have been pretty damn reliable and robustly built well. I never broke a Wiimote when I would drop them from time to time because of the motion controls.
If I ever broke the main controller on my Wii U (which Nintendo shut off online services for now) you needed to buy an entire new console
Another factor though was that I don’t need to play yet another Mario sequel. As a character, he’s actually not that interesting (and a bit of a cuck if we’re being honest)
I’d also fuck Bowser rather than Mario so I get Peach.
I only got the Switch because I was anticipating SMT:V, it getting an update and PC release a few years later came rather unexpected to me. Not really interested in ever buying a Nintendo console again.
Most of my DnD table is a die hard Nintendo Fan. They shit on palworld saying its copying pokemon, they buy every console and pokemon game, it’s kinda crazy to see. I feel like it’s half nostalgia and half some sort of parasocial relationship where they see Nintendo as a friend.
Ah, man. All the US got was a price increase! But, to be fair… Art of the Deal… /s
How to motivate right to repair advocacy in other regions in one easy step…
It’s because Nintendo executives don’t really understand the Western world.
Apparently Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of America are constantly at loggerheads with Nintendo of Japan over their various brain dead, ultimately self-defeating, schemes.
For starters I cannot imagine that having two product lines with minor differences can be economically viable, and secondly what’s the point in pissing your customer base off? There is zero logic behind this decision.
Good, if only they could ever drop prices I would maybe even buy one
Unfortunately game console price drops are pretty much gone for the foreseeable future and have been since we started getting to the 7nm-ish node sizes.
The main reason for price cuts in the PS3/360 era and earlier was technological advancement in terms of shrinking the node. This gave instant massive price reductions to the company, and allowed them to then redesign the console to be much smaller with less cooling since the chips now are smaller and generated way less heat.
That doesn’t happen anymore. There’s no shrinking to be done.
When you add in the cost increases for RAM and SSDs, it’s a match made in hell for customers.
It’s more likely to go up in price for the foreseeable future.
The incentive to buy one comes from the expectation it‘ll be even more expensive this time next year. Not sure it‘s working, though.
Well if they had some games I was actually all that interested in it might be a compelling product. All it got is a Mario Kart game which looks ok but not enough for me to buy a console for it and another Zelda game.
The big problem is that there isn’t a reason for me to buy a switch 2 over the original switch, and there isn’t a lot of reason me to buy a switch over a steam deck or another handheld. They’ve entered into a pretty saturated market with a niche product. Every other handheld can play wider selection of games.
Calling the switch “niche” when comparing it to a steam deck or other handhelds is hilarious. The switch 2 outsold the steam decks entire lifetime sales on release day. I say lifetime as in not just how many it had sold up til then, but how many more it will sell in the future too lol.
And something tells me when prices fall again, Nintendo would just carry on and pocket the difference
If I ever do buy one, you can bet I’ll be specifically searching for one of those Euro-spec ones with replaceable batteries.
If you do, you may also need to get EU versions of the games… I don’t know if they’re still region locking them but at the very least used to be a common practice
Switch 1 isn’t region locked (when it comes to physical games), don’t know about Switch 2. I suppose they could always patch that on via an OTA update…
Switch 2 is region-free, except for the cheaper Japan-only model.
That makes sense, to Nintendo at least
I’m sure you could hack the switch 2. I hacked my switch and get all my games for free
If I have to mod the product in order to make the product viable I’m just not going to bother.
There are no hacks available for Switch 2 so far.
They don’t need to drop prices though - they get plenty of sales without it.
Also, all consumer electronics are going up in price due to the component (RAM, GPU, SSD) shortages, which are happening because the majority of new stock is being sold to AI companies.
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They don’t need to drop the price there are plenty of sales available
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Everything is going up in price because of AI anyway
So which one is it?
You read that wrong. They didn’t say there are sales, as in discounts, available. They said they’re getting sales, ie selling every unit they produce, even with the price increase.
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Yes, I’m aware of that. It’s kinda hard to avoid knowing that.
They need to drop the prices of the games too
We need a right to repair…
