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

Are you fucking kidding? They didn't switch to Hall effect?

Battery life and weight. That’s what keeps me from getting a pc handheld. Although the switch 2 is so big I don’t know if that holds true anymore

Battery life and weight. That’s what keeps me from getting a pc handheld. Although the switch 2 is so big I don’t know if that holds true anymore

After the initial excitement I think the Switch 2 is gonna bomb. Offers too little for too much.

Not a problem. I wasn't gonna buy one amyways.

I really appreciate iFixit and how they help bring the discussion of repairability to the forefront.

Not to mention those things are expensive AF. If I had to replace a part on my car that cost 25% of the cost of the entire car EACH time, I would just not buy from that company any longer (which is what I’m doing). Not sure why this person is writing paragraphs and paragraphs of excuses for Nintendo.

Yeah, the EU has shown they're serious when it comes to consumer protections. It's great to see!

Nintendo has been the Apple of the video game world since the N64.

I mean yeah, I wouldn't expect otherwise. Nobody hates their fans more than Nintendo does.

Even Apple makes more repairable hardware.

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.

Battery life and weight. That’s what keeps me from getting a pc handheld. Although the switch 2 is so big I don’t know if that holds true anymore

It's not planned obsolescence if your device is meant to last for decades. You could argue about the joycon if they had done that on purpose, but given that they ended up having to replace a bunch of them it seems pretty likely that their business model is to sell you four pairs to play with friends, not to keep reselling you more as they break.

Nintendo's business is not based on the product becoming worse artificially to upsell you on a replacement. Their model is to keep making incremental replacements and then drop a generational upgrade every decade or so. That's not how planned obsolescence works. You don't get artificial performance degradation, deliberately fragile parts or artifical restrictions to repair via signed components. People can (and many do) repair Nintendo hardware on third party repair services with third party replacement parts, and from what iFixIt is saying that doesn't seem to have changed.

Which is not to say Nintendo put ANY thought into repairability here. They clearly expect you to buy a Switch 2 and keep it until you buy a Switch 2 Lite. This thing is very new and that may yet change in both directions. But so far all I see here is the same old "we built this to be cheap and durable", which is fundamentally not Apple's "you'll buy one of these every two years and if it breaks you will come to us for a replacement and like it" approach.

Probably depends entirely on what games you play, and how sensitive you are, but hall effects feel like trash and destroy the joycon battery life. I tried playing Celeste with hall effects and wooooow was it bad. Basically unplayable past the early chapters.

I mean, it's clearly not meant to last decades given the battery situation.

You'd think, but I have Nintendo handhelds from the 2000s that still hold a charge fine, and so does my launch Switch 1, which is about a decade old.

The Switch 2 is the first one of these they ship with a battery care charge mode, too, which is interesting. I think as they abandon their old single-threaded, no-multitasking design, for a more mobile-like architecture they're also having to make similar adjustments to their battery management, so it'll be interesting to see if the Switch 2 battery struggles with degradation more than older devices. It sure is more power hungry, and it does get hotter so you'd expect more charge cycles per year and less durability. It's going to be an open question for a while.

Still not the worst battery health in a Nintendo product, no matter what happens. That'll always be the WiiU controller. That sytem laster just a couple of years and I still had to replace the battery for an aftermarket one and ended up using it plugged in anyway.

For example, coming into effect in 12 days, on the 20th of June, for smartphones and tablets:

• Durability: Devices should be resistant to accidental drops and protected against dust and water.

• Battery longevity: Batteries must endure at least 800 full charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their original capacity.

• Repairability: Manufacturers must make critical spare parts available within 5 to 10 working days, and continue offering them for 7 years after the product is no longer sold in the EU.

• Software support: Devices must receive operating system upgrades for at least 5 years from the end-of-sale date.

• Repair access: Professional repairers must have non-discriminatory access to any required software or firmware.

They will also have to include a sticker on packaging that has standardised information on it concerning energy efficiency, battery life, repeated drop test results, battery endurance in charging cycles, repairability score, and water/dust protection rating:

Source