All the more reason for me not to purchase it.
After the initial excitement I think the Switch 2 is gonna bomb. Offers too little for too much.
Maybe if it was 349 or 399... but 499 is wild
That's not even the biggest issue for me. The $80 games that never get discounted will cost a lot more than that pretty quickly. Plus I know they push their subscription service too.
As a PC gamer, fuck that. I'll play cheap better games on my free operating system that I actually control on my hardware that I can repair and replace easily. Nintendo games interest me, but not nearly at the price they're asking for with what they're offering.
Just yesterday I spent 3 hours playing MK8D on my PC. Cozy on my bed and a controller + a remote keyboard.
Felt like the real deal.
Edit: Why the downvotes? Is emulation so frowned upon here?
I implore people to watch the teardown guide itself, which is way more nuanced than the clickbaity The Verge article.
I'm not a fan of the use of glue in the joycon sides and the fact that the color strips under the controllers are hiding screws. The bigger complaint is the battery glue, especially because you can imagine aftermarket parts with bigger capacity could be a thing here. I definitely wouldn't open this thing unless it has a problem.
Some components are still modular, which is nice. I can't imagine the sticks not having changed design is great, but it's entirely possible they're way more durable, which the teardown acknowledges. Keep in mind that, while all controllers can drift, most controllers don't fail that way. It's possible to build this type of stick without widespread issues. Time will tell, though.
The switch 2 gives out complete apple vibes. It's repairability is pretty horrid after watching the teardown guide.
Controllers will fail sooner or later and will have to be replaced. Here it will end up replacing the whole stick just due to glueing small parts of the controller.
Battery will also fail sooner than later. The whole thing yells planned absolesence...
It absolutely does not. Nintendo hardware is built like a freight truck. The teardown guide references the JerryRigEverything "durability test" and I am pretty sure unless you use it to bash someone's head in this thing will last (and even then).
What it reeks of is Nintendo wanting to make things cheap and sell you multiple of them. Which they do. My launch Switch 1 lasted until I got a Lite and then an Oled and I expect this one will do pretty much the same. That doesn't mean their joycon won't need fixing or replacing (and I did have to open and mod my Lite, which wasn't easy).
I think Nintendo hasn't adjusted its industrial design to modern repairability concerns yet, which is a very Nintendo thing (and definitely not the same as Apple artificially holding down the repair ecosystem to itself artificially). I like neither option, but I'd take Nintendo's approach over Apple's any day. They absolutely need to comply with modern right to repair regulations, though, and that will mean doing more than they're currently doing.
What it reeks of is Nintendo wanting to make things cheap and sell you multiple of them
That's the "apple like" planned obsolesence part I was refering to. Think about airpods for example.
The teardown doesn't touch on part serialization, although the ability to brick your device if they "feel like it" is on PAR with Apple.
Although I'm not sure we should be arguing about which of the two is shittier when both are already deep in non compliance of "modern right to repair regulations (lmao)"
No, big differences at play here. Nintendo won't plan obsolescence, they will give you a base version at launch (multiple, if they can, since they're handheld devices and a single family may conceivably want a couple) and then they will iterate on the form factor with a cheaper, slimmer alternative and a bigger, premium alternative. None of those will stop working or break at any point, though. They don't care about them being replaced. In fact, they prefer if they aren't, given they make a cut of the software, too.
They are planned to stack on each other. Sell you multiples for multiple users. Apple can't do that trick, because everybody already owns a phone and the software is backwards compatible and interoperable, so they need to push you to replacement hardware. Nintendo's on a different business.
The remote bricking is not planned obsolescence, it's Nintendo's draconian opinion that they own every part of the hardware and the software fundamentally, so emulation, user modding and jailbreaking are crimes against humanity. They are wrong, but they will continue to enforce it aggressively even beyond what is legally established. This is because it goes fundamentally counter to their hardware design, which relies on cheap-but-robust devices you can give to kids that are built with imaginatively repurposed older tech. They see enthusiasts improving on their price-optimal design as a threat and will send ninjas to stab you if you disagree.
I disagree, but there are degrees of separation here. Nintendo still needs to be forced to provide replacement parts, specs and so forth, though.
If you design a product to be intentionally difficult to repair, using subpar parts, is it not planned obsolescence? I really don't get what you are about there. Unless you require some sort of an internal clock to force brick the device to be considered planned?
Everything else is correct and I agree.
I really appreciate iFixit and how they help bring the discussion of repairability to the forefront.
Part of the difficulty is that Nintendo have hitsquads that will blow your city if you even look sideways at one of the screw.
I mean yeah, I wouldn't expect otherwise. Nobody hates their fans more than Nintendo does.
Not surprised, given it's Nintendo. My Switch Lite has seen very little use since I got my Steam Deck, tho.
Not surprising. Nintendo is turning into the Apple of the video game world.
Hope the drift issue is fixed. Ran into the issue with two of mine. The paper under the joystick hack didn't work and one of the brand new replacement joysticks I installed isn't responsive. ๐
Spoiler alert: it's not. Same joysticks as last time.
It's the same joystick design. As the video says that doesn't mean it will have the same issues as frequently, but it does mean it can have the same issues. The question will be at what rate.
Given the coverage I have very low hopes that we will get a good idea of that from the press. Instead I expect the first Switch 2 joycon to drift will be put on an auction sale for every clickbait article to parade in front of people with rotten tomatoes at the ready. Still, it will matter if it's one in two or one in a million.
They could have easily fixed it with hall effect sticks. That is a proven and inexpensive solution, but Nintendo prefers to sell more joycons and create waste, it's that simple.
It's kind of wild, especially given how much they must have lost in that lawsuit requiring them to repair joy-cons free of charge
It's not, and the joycons are even HARDER to repair due to a piece of plastic glued over a screw on the inside..
Congrats it's worse! Harder to get to :)
Great video. That's a disappointing outcome though.
It was interesting to hear though that Nintendo hasn't made any replacement parts available for the original switch, despite the fact that New York State apparently requires this by law.
I wonder if they'll be forced to comply with that at some point. There are probably other jurisdictions that require this or that will require this soon. I'd love to see some pressure applied to companies that don't make replacement parts available.
At this point I trust in the EU to force Nintendo to play the right-to-repair game.
Yeah, the EU has shown they're serious when it comes to consumer protections. It's great to see!
I wonder if Nintendo will ever embrace repairability like some phone companies have
I guess there's more competition in phones than in devices that can run Mario Cart
If you consider how hostile they are with everything else, I highly doubt it. Nintendo never again
Haha when they did that blog post to change the switch from 8/10 to 4/10 saying they don't normally do that but wanted to make sure you could compare the 2 properly against the original, I thought they were making space for the 2 to be above the original, not that they were going to mark it as worse ๐
This was inevitable. Everybody who was ever going to buy a Switch has already bought one. How else are they going to make more money? Keep increasing prices and keep cutting costs (enshittification essentially). These two will be the centre of all big business for the coming years.
the Switch 2 is a waste of money.
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