Turns out companies would rather reverse planned obsolescence than lose access to an entire geographic market. I wonder what else we could get these capitalist fascists to do if we united and forced them into a corner?
But what if it goes wrong, and the parasites vacate our area, leaving room for vibrant innovative new companies to thrive?!
😱 oh no!
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.
Id assume bots are being used to show outrage about them changing it in the EU unlike here. Theres no downside to an upgrade like this.
I can be mad at both. B
i wonder if it was always like this or this is a recent thing
Thats crazy to make it EU only.
Even apple went world wide when Europe forced them into C
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.
Complain to your fascist government. lol good luck.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How long do you think it’ll take before Nintendo adds a software check so you can’t have the European version outside of Europe beyond short term travel?
Apple did this exact thing on iPhone and 3rd party stores so I would be surprised if this wasn’t already baked into the firmware on the Switch.
I was on holiday on Greece when they dropped the iOS update that opened up third party app stores, so installed it over shitty wifi to see what I could install.
Nope, my account is British, so no go.
Fuckers.
Europe bad, why do this, why not make for America too? Should America invade Europe for this reason? Why not? /Joke
I was considering buying a switch 2 for a couple of the exclusives, despite my prior beliefs, but this confirms that I shouldn’t have even considered it
fuck you Nintendo, stop disrespecting me as a customer
We’ll be able to torrent all those “exclusives” in one or two years. No need to give Nintendo any money for being scumbags.
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.
Why only EU though?
Because only the EU is legally requiring it
They’re not willing to give a pinky to other countries. They’d rather have two assembly lines. I hope the law spreads, followed by the same happeningto Nintendo’s butthole.
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.
On the one hand, yes, this is the minimum. On the other hand, they’re making their supply chain more complicated by carrying 2 different versions with different parts etc.
So in that sense they’re going out of their way to be assholes.
Thats been Nintendo’s modus operandi for at least the past 15 years.
You can’t fucking replace the batteries on switches?!
Why do you assholes buy these consoles? Seriously.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you can’t replace batteries on most modern portable computing devices these days.
“because my friends did, but is so expensive, and I had to buy it.” What people said to me.
Probably because of Mario and Zelda. Which is 100% legit.
And if you don’t have a Steamdeck or other handheld, there is no shortage of 3rd party indie titles on the Switch. It’s pretty great for those.
Nintendo people would buy literal shit if it had Nintendo™ on it
On Switch 1 it’s not too hard, but the 2 is glued shut.
because myopic little gremlins care more about their instant gratification and newest shinies than anything else.
but don’t worry, once the new wears off, they’ll go back to pointing out the flaws and “hating” the company just like everyone else.
No one asked you to swing by and mouth-breathe your lame-ass insults.
Sure buddy.
Calm down honey
For everyone who thought eu legislation would force corporations make better stuff globally, that’s how much they care about you.
And people still buying from nintendo is really disappointing
It does it’s just Nintendo going out of their way to be awkward even to their own detriment.
Look at Apple, everyone gets USB-C iPhones now they could have made a USB-C version for the European market and a mag-safe port for other markets but that would have meant two different power boards and different body designs but each market which wasn’t worth it. Nintendo however have decided to actually put the cost into making two different body moulds and two different circuit boards one for non-replaceable batteries and one for replaceable batteries.
Nintendo have been anti-consumer for a long time but I’m surprised that they’re willing to waste money on it.
I think this is giving Apple too much credit, they played the largest role in the development of USB-C’s design. Started putting it on their MacBooks and IPads pretty early. They were more likely just trying to avoid another bad press cycle like when they switched to lightning. As we can see with the App Store and browsers they absolutely will be anti-consumer when they don’t think their is any real risk to them.
cough cough … app store…
I thought EU legislation would make better stuff in the EU and it has.
I mean the main point right now is to make stuff better for ourselves but there are examples of others benefitting from our legislation like the case of usb-c. Individual governments also help, like germany spending money on linux development and adopting it on government system in certain states.
It’s only making it more expensive for themselves. They want to have two production lines for two separate models… Well that effects their profit margin.
See, it’s worth so much to screw over consumers
Is it though or is this just them being spiteful?
How often do the batteries in the non-user replaceable version fail, they can’t have the failure rate be too high or else word would get around. So they’re doing this against the cost of some theoretical future benefit may very well not come to pass. I suspect this decision hasn’t been properly costed out.
It’s quite obviously cheaper to not make it replaceable, otherwise they would do it globally. Companies are not that spiteful when it comes to money. The battery is probably already theoretically replaceable by repair shops with special tool or whatever, there was just an opening in the hull missing. So it’s likely just one or two pieces that have to be manufactured differently, the rest can stay the same.
It’s not because it’s cheaper, it’s because it’s harder to repair. They don’t want you to be able to repair your stuff, they want you to replace it.
The other two markets are too big to include and not profit from the resulting issues.
You juat have to make it unprofitable enough for two models to coexist to make them just fold and only make one.
Maintaining two product lines simply out of spite really is just such a Nintendo thing to do.
Not just spite. It also proves they profit more from proprietary repairs than it costs to maintain 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.
I have never and will never pay for a Nintendo product because of shit like this. Doesn’t mean you 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.
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?
When Apple was forced by the EU to use USB-C, they didn’t make a non-US and a US phone; everyone got the same port.
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.
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.
I love OLED screens, but after my $3k LG OLED tv started showing the PUBG UI every time there was red on the screen where the UI was, I’ve switched back to LCD for gaming and am not regretting it.
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.
Nintendo really dropping the ball at every opportunity. Life long Nintendo fan here and I’ll never buy anything from them ever again.
Last Nintendo console I’ll ever buy is a used New Nintendo 3DS XL which I’ve modded with Homebrew and all that and loaded with emulators with tons of ROMs. It’s a fantastic piracy machine that runs NES, SNES, SMS, GEN/SMD, N64, PSX, GB, GBC, GBA, DS, DSi, and 3DS games!
A used n3ds xl costs close to a switch 2 these days lol
Damn! I guess the word got out and collectors have taken over!
If you don’t need to play DS/3DS games, the Chinese systems are very popular. These devices are much cheaper than used Nintendo kit. Some of them are much more powerful, with better screens and battery life. There’s a whole scene dedicated to developing custom OSes with really nice emulator frontends for them!
I recommend TechDweeb on YouTube if you want to learn more about the scene. If I had to start over again today I’d get a Knulli-based device. I may still get one at some point.
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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.
