Nintendo Confirms EU‑Only Switch 2 Revision With User‑Replaceable Batteries

https://lemmy.today/post/54327081

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
Will humanity exist this time next year?

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.
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
There are no hacks available for Switch 2 so far.
If I have to mod the product in order to make the product viable I’m just not going to bother.
They need to drop the prices of the games too

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.
  • 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?

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.
That’s probably my fault for not wording it well. I edited my comment to say “they sell plenty of them” instead.
It’s more likely to go up in price for the foreseeable future.

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.

Ah, man. All the US got was a price increase! But, to be fair… Art of the Deal… /s
We need a right to repair…
Maintaining two product lines simply out of spite really is just such a Nintendo thing to do.
Seriously, just do the right thing. Goddamn
The right thing costs 1% more can’t waste that
Probably costs .1% more.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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?

Not just spite. It also proves they profit more from proprietary repairs than it costs to maintaining both production lines.
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).

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.