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.
Thos is far from a Nintendo exclusive problem.
It is the way entire industries are going (and have neen going for decades).
It’s only strong consumer protection laws that stand in their way.
Yes. And it’s extra dumb, because Nintendo is already the only ones not selling the console at close to cost in order to move more games.
In hindsight, the breaking joycons look less like an accident and more like a plan.
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.
I guarantee you they’ve made the calculation and found that the cost is well offset by the profits gained from the inability of other markets to repair their owned switches.
Thats crazy to make it EU only.
In the EU bottle caps have to be attached to the bottle so they stay together when thrown away. Everyone working in recycling and especially people working in stuff like river cleanups praise how this is a gigantic improvement. It is universally a good thing.
Even Coca Cola used it in advertising to sell how environmentally friendly they are (by not breaking the law). However they are only doing it in countries where it is legally required and nowhere else.
I had no idea this was a thing; just read up on it and what a cool mandate.
As I understood it, the bottle caps are too small to be recycled seperately. They can’t be processed together with the bottle, and get tossed anyway. If attached, there’s a good possibility none of it gets recycled.
Just looked it up, depends on your local region. Mine requires caps be removed, and bottle rinsed and flattened.
That’s just not true. Bottles are made from 4 different plastics that all have to be separated for recycling (bottle, label, cap+ribbon, soft part inside the cap to make a waterproof seal). The ribbon part the cap is attached to is also present in bottles where the cap is not attached and it has to be removed anyway. So nothing really changed there except the part that has to be removed is bigger now.
Despite what right wing nuts that have to be against every progress say, there is literally no downside to this law.
But the biggest improvement is from nature cleanup crews that previously always found the bottles but never the caps.
Well on my county’s recycling website it literally says the cap cannot be recycled and must be removed and thrown in the trash. Im certain this was the case the last place I lived too.
If the EU has recycling centers that can process them together that’s great and the law makes sense.
Not sure what needs to change aside from heavily limiting the production of plastic, but recycling has basically always been bullshit. One small win for plastic bottles in the EU doesn’t solve the larger issue of every other mixed material or dirty plastic container that ultimately ends up in a landfill.
How many people clean and dry everything they recycle? How many people separate different plastics, mixed material items, or remove recyclable parts from things they throw away? So much of what can be recycled doesn’t get recycled.
Looks like less than 10% of what can be recycled gets recycled, and up to 30% of what ends up in a recycling centers is trashed anyway. It should never have been the consumers responsibility. Wish people would stop buying this crap.
Plastic is the worst of all https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-bottle-you-thought-you-recycled-may-have-been-downcycled-instead/. This is nothing but performative. Might only falsly appease someone’s conscience.
I love that the overwhelming response to this is getting mad at Nintendo for complying with EU law instead of getting mad at the US Government for lagging severely behind on consumer rights. Small wonder things aren’t getting better.
I can be mad at both. B
Maybe, but skimming through the comments I didn’t see anything directly making this point and only a few, not particularly upvoted, posts that touched on consumer rights issues. Can and do missed each other again :(
i wonder if it was always like this or this is a recent thing
Maintaining two product lines simply out of spite really is just such a Nintendo thing to do.
I have never and will never pay for a Nintendo product because of shit like this. Doesn’t mean I 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.
Likewise, Nintendo has now joined Sony for me in my Never Another Red Cent category. I’ve got an entire bookcase full of Nintendo games and systems ranging from the NES all the way up to the OG Switch but it ends there. It’s guaranteed that they will never shape up, so I’ll never give them any more money.
Sony was so close to me diving head first into their PC gaming ecosystem, cause there were a lot of games i really wanted to get into, when they pulled the “HAHA SURPRISE, ALL THOSE GAMES YOU’VE ALREADY BOUGHT AND PLAYED? NOW YOU HAVE TO HAVE A PLAYSTATION ACCOUNT FOR THEM BECAUSE WE SAID SO!” and basically guaranteed I’ll never own another playstation product for the rest of my life.
For me it was the music CD rootkit thing, and trying to sue people for watching a particular Youtube video. Sony has already been on my no fly list for a very long time.
I forgot about the rootkit thing.
And wait, what? suing over watching a youtube video? I never heard about this
When Sony was suing George Hotz over his PS3 jailbreak video, they also tried to bully Youtube (or possibly Google, I forget if this was post-Google acquisition) into revealing the IPs and identities of everyone who watched the video so they could attempt to sue them for “piracy” also. Obviously they did not succeed, but the fact that they tried says a lot.
I’ve also never paid Nintendo for any of their games, but that’s because they don’t interest me
Yeah, tbf I’m in the same boat. But their anti consumer philosophy is causation for my philosophy about making extra effort not to give them a cent.
Seriously, just do the right thing. Goddamn
The right thing costs 1% more can’t waste that
It’s probably cheaper to do the right thing. It’d allow them to have a single product line, rather than two. However, it’d mean they can’t screw over customers and sell them replacements, so it’d cost them in additional sales.
Probably costs .1% more.
Being anti consumer is more profitable than making 2 product lines. Remember if you live in other countries not in EU you are inferior because Nintendo just told you so.
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.
Not just spite. It also proves they profit more from proprietary repairs than it costs to maintain both production lines.
EU be like: Feels good to be a gangsta.
Such a dick move keeping it EU only, and also not surprising… Nintendo is hostile towards its fanbase and always has been.
I went PC-only several years ago and haven’t looked back.
I’m done with consoles. That does mean missing out on some games, but interesting games are already coming out faster than I can play them.
Nintendo can just eat a dick, seriously. I’m gonna pirate their games to my heart’s content, they can throw as many little hissy fits as they want about it.
Ah, man. All the US got was a price increase! But, to be fair… Art of the Deal… /s
Nintendo really dropping the ball at every opportunity. Life long Nintendo fan here and I’ll never buy anything from them ever again.
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.
Why only EU though?
Because only the EU is legally requiring it
Because they only are doing the minimum needed changes to align with the law. Other countries don’t have the law, so they don’t do it there. Same game as with Apple.
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.
The only good things I have to say about the joycons are that they enable you to play a few 2 player games with only the base set (tablet + 2 joycons), and that I made some money shellswapping/repairing parts for people who didn’t feel confident in messing with the very delicate ribbon cables.
Other than that, they are uncomfortable, fragile, and prone to all sorts of failures. Thw inclusion of HD rumble was a waste of money, as well as the unused infrared sensor.
The IR sensor is used in Ring Fit Adventure, heart rate measurement. That’s about all I can think of.
Honestly, for the price of one set of joycons I’d rather pick up two 8bit do ultimate controllers. That way both players get good controllers.
I think 1-2-Switch and Labo use it as well, but ultimately the IR sensors are basically unused.
I wonder how much it cost them to include it in every set of joycons, compared to how much they made selling games that use it.
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.
Good, if only they could ever drop prices I would maybe even buy one
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.
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.
It’s more likely to go up in price for the foreseeable future.
They don’t need to drop prices though - they sell plenty of them at the current prices.
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.
Yes, I’m aware of that. It’s kinda hard to avoid knowing that.
How to motivate right to repair advocacy in other regions in one easy step…
We need a right to repair…
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.
