Nintendo Confirms EU‑Only Switch 2 Revision With User‑Replaceable Batteries
Nintendo Confirms EU‑Only Switch 2 Revision With User‑Replaceable Batteries
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.
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.
They don’t need to drop the price there are plenty of sales available
Everything is going up in price because of AI anyway
So which one is it?
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.
I 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.
I forgot about the rootkit thing.
And wait, what? suing over watching a youtube video? I never heard about this
Probably would have succeeded if it was in a japanese court against a Japanese company.
Which I think its why these Japanese companies specifically feel emboldened to do stupid shit like that.
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.
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.
Apple mostly do it with software though, for example only allowing third-party app stores in EU and Japan.
While that’s not great, at least Apple’s software can be changed later. How do you retroactively add a battery to a console?
Nintendo did that first. Not just with the Super Nintendo, but the original NES vs. the Famicom.
There was kinda-sorta a justifiable reason for that in the sense that different countries at that time had different television standards with frame rates and vertical line counts which the systems of the era were inherently tied to, and sticking an NTSC game in a PAL system or vise-versa even if it fit and would play would not produce an optimal result. (Sometimes it still didn’t — ask people about the Street Fighter games in PAL regions, for instance.)
Now that the world is all on the same digital TV standards, region locking can be done in software.
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.
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.
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.
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.