Mar
8th
2017
Switch launch: A lot of problem units have been reported. · 4:52pm Mar 8th, 2017
Yyyyeah I'm waiting until the Switch2 that fixes all this shit. 
EDIT: The above notwithstanding, there are contradictory reports that demonstrate the extreme durability of the Switch, more keeping in line with Nintendo's tradition of durable hardware. There's a video on Youtube (not linking it because it's painful to watch) of these guys cutting a hole in a Switch with a waterjet while playing a game on it. Even while being cut with a waterjet, it kept working until they cut through the battery. At which point it became a smoking ruin.
I haven't had any trouble yet. I got mine on release day from a Shopko, and I didn't have any trouble at all. At least I'm not having trouble.
And Breath of the Wild is quite a fun game. Hard, but fun.
A new non-handheld console that has a terrible launch?
...so, whats the news?
4448016 Thank you so much for saying this, and now I feel youdeserve this media.giphy.com/media/1Z02vuppxP1Pa/giphy.gif
But seriously. A new console has bugs, and I am seeing half of what these people are doing, and I think they have to be fucking retards. Does it not come with instructions? If not, then go to Nintendo's website since if it doesn't have any, they should be there instead, and if it is a QC thing, than I guess making it cheaper than the rest of the consoles isn't a good idea. Things tend to break, when they aren't used properly, so let that sink in.
There's a list of complaints that owners has noticed and I would wait until they either fix it or come out with a better version.
4448016
4448030 So in your mind, dead pixels are caused by customer misuse? Joycon sync failures are caused by customer misuse? Screens getting scratched because of a known manufacturing defect with the dock is caused by customer misuse? Not being able to play in kickstand mode while charging because of the USB port placement is caused by customer misuse? Myriad software failures are caused by customer misuse?
Sometimes, these things are actual QC problems that the manufacturer should have addressed before releasing the product. Outside of the "licking the Zelda game card" thing, pretty much all of these issues are on Nintendo, not the end user.
4448036 No. I am not saying that. I am saying how they handle things, and I know QC issues arise. I know the technical things are QC issues, but the physical handling of them could be better. I feel that for stuff that isn't technical or glitches, they can go online and see how it is done without breaking it, or doing something they shouldn't have.
I know that this will happen, and all the errors, games not reading, consoles crashing or worse, are really concerning for anyone buying it, yet at the same time, they can afford a $300 console, and those that could barely afford it, and are having these issue, I feel really sorry for, but those that can afford this like nothing, can at least try and get it fixed.
This isn't right that this is happening, don't get me wrong, but I see the physical handling that some people are doing and that pisses me off.
Nintendo will fix this if it is bad enough, but I feel people are too quick to jump on the band wagon of shaming when something goes wrong when it is just a Quality control issue that affects not that many that own it.
While I won't deny that a good amount of Switch consoles are going to have the good old day one issues, most of these are consumer caused, either by being too hasty putting the system in the dock or outright trying to break it. (not the joycon desync or dead pixels, that's something that's an annoyance, not to mention the other problems with cartridge based sysems.)
As for the charge port placement... I got nothing. That was just dumb.
4448054 And the fact that kids are expected to handle these consoles without breaking them? These $300 consoles? Unsupervised sometimes? Nintendo builds its stuff to last for a reason: their core audience of gamers is KIDS.
The Switch isn't kid-proof. At all.
People are buying the Switch for their kids.
Let that sink in.
4448062 I am, and I understand. A dumb move on their part, but I feel like they are gearing up for a kid-friendly version of this, so a kid can use it much more easier.
This is why early adopters of any technology are guinea pigs, to an extent. Humans being humans, we'll do a wide array of things to our devices their designers never dreamed of, and they'll go back to the drawing board to correct these mistakes for the second generation. Why do you think every time a new version of any OS comes out, it's called crap by those who rush out to buy it and then try to run 10-year-old programs or hook up similarly-aged peripherals on/to it?
I was considering selling my Wii U for one, but now...
I think I'll wait till ALL THE BUGS AND SHIT ARE FIXED.
Frankly, I'm starting to think that the Wii U's a better built console than the Switch.
Switch is cool, no doubt, but IT NEEDS FIXING.
It seems wildly overblown to me - I have a 100% flawless unit, and apparently it's basically the biggest launch of any Nintendo console ever (beating the Wii by a bit). The Wii U shipped somewhere in the 500.000 range in its first week, according to the info I could find. That means that even if 99% of units are flawless there's still going to be 5000 units that slipped past QC while faulty (or got broken in transport). And the people who got a faulty unit at launch are the loudest - that's the way it goes for the launch of every hotly anticipated item. "No faults" is the default state, so those people don't tend to rant on the Internet or post videos.
All of that said, I can understand waiting. If not for Nintendo to iron out the kinks of their manufacturing process, then you should at least wait until the game lineup has more system-movers than just Zelda.
I'll gladly wait for more games to be available that I want to play, and for the chance of buggies to be squashed. The only must have game on the system right now is also on the WiiU, and already is in my hands. So what if I can only play it at home?
They gave up on the Wii U too soon. I call it the Xbox chicken move. Just like the Xbox 360 it was fairy new and bugs are found out. Sure it takes time. But that time can turn into more money. The PlayStation 2 will always be the best because it can last up to seven years!
As much as I'd love to be playing the new Zelda game already, this is kinda the reason why I decided to buy the Switch for Christmas and not immediately. It also conveniently gives me time to save money for it.
Honestly the issues are overblown, if you don't want the switch right now that's fine, as someone who owns one I can say it's not worth it but if you really want one now go for it. There are issues but those are the minority.
4448114
Erm...ANY well-designed piece of computer hardware can "last" indefinitely if you take care of it properly. My PS2 slim is still in good working order after 12 years. There are still a lot of NES and SNES units out there that work. Computer hardware doesn't HAVE an expiration date like food does. It's the consumer interest in that device that has an expiration date, as people want more advanced things that do more stuff and newer stuff. Which doesn't mean the system itself is dead. It means the market for it has changed.
There's n reason to expect a PS2, properly cared for, would ever actually cease to function. Memory cards, yes, flash memory has...longevity issues.
Eh. Mine works perfectly fine.
4448147 I'm glad, because I know how much you were looking forward to Zelda-breath. :3
I'm inclined to believe the issues are not as critical as they are made out to be: After all, I haven't experienced any of them (including the Joy-Con desync issues), and it seems really unlikely I just happened to get a rare Switch that works fine. It's maybe not impossible, sure, but it's unlikely.
Concerning people buying the console for their kids, I haven't seen any Switch marketing aimed at kids. Maybe it's there, I don't know, but all the marketing I've seen is aimed at late teens and older: The Switch's target demographic is ages 14 to 38, based on my own observations of the fact that that comprises the entire range of people that grew up with the NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube. It's not aimed at kids; if people buy it for their kid and it gets broken because the kid is irresponsible with it, that isn't Nintendo's fault. It's the fault of whoever bought it for their kid.
4448022
How well a console sells at launch is an indicator of how successfully it was marketed, not how well it actually works, so that's hardly an argument against the complaints being raised.
That being said, a lot of the most vocal
nayneigh-sayers seem to have either an ulterior motive for wanting to gin up outrage (Click-baitery abounds) or are simply dumbasses who should maybe first master basic motor control before they grapple with modern technology on YouTube. So far I have seen no indication that the rate of faulty units is any higher than normal and expected; it just feels inflated because at a console launch an enormous amount of people get the device all at once, and a lot of those same people are overly hyped, so naturally they howl all the louder if they happen to get one of the defective units.This does not absolve Nintendo from bone-headed design decisions, of course, such as the charging port placement (I foresee a market for 3rd-party Switch-stands springing up in the near future), but so far that's the only genuine cock-up I've heard about. (As opposed to gripes along the lines of "This machine is not exactly what I imagined it to be!") I have no doubt that additional issues will arise, as things shake out.
Speaking as someone who has no dog in this fight, who is neither hyped for nor biased against this console, It really doesn't look like this launch is unusually problematic, let alone "disastrous", from the outside.
4448114 WRONG! PS2 will always be the best, because it has the .Hack games.
4448488 that is one of the games I have never played. Couldn't find it.
4448114 The PS2 only lasted so long because Sony made the original PS3 sell way too high and before the Blu-Ray market had truly developed enough to justify buying a console that could double as one. Then when Sonny issued a slimmer, cheaper model, all backwards compatability was cut off, and the PSN library of PS1/PS2 games didn't have enough of the "Must Have" classics and game changers, plus the PS3 hit during the global finanical crisis, so a lot of gamers had other issues to worry about and many non gamers had less money to spend compared to when the PS2 was launched in 2000. Had Sony perhaps thought more wisely, waited longer, or just not made the slim model unable to play any PS2 games at all (the PS2 had the biggest gaming library of any first party console) the PS2 probably wouldn't have lasted as long as it did.
The Wii-U's problems were primarily a terrible marketing campaign that left most people confused about it, and most of the casual gamers who bought the Wii saw little reason to upgrade to the Wii-U, and like the Wii had a lack of third party support (though this was more a developer problem than a Nintendo problem, developers didn't want to take the time to learn how to work with the Wii-U, though Nintendo could've made it less complicated to program for), plus many of the better games that got people interested in buying it, didn't come out until later in its life span. Time will tell if The Switch is able to overcome these issues, or if it will at least be able to make up for them with a strong casual market like the Wii had.
4448544 The WiiU's single biggest problem is that it is a bewildering console that nobody had any real incentive to get. And, y'know, Nintendo's continued refusal to understand how to become relevant in the digital download market.
4448338
Since you have no dog in this fight, I actually would like to ask your opinion, since it's unlikely to be biased one way or the other:
Concerning the charge port's placement on the bottom of the tablet, and keeping in mind that it needs to dock with its base station, in your opinion where should it have been placed?
4448643 I'll butt in (since it's my blog) and offer my own opinion here:
The problem isn't the charge port placement so much as it is the design of the charge cable. The engineers at Nintendo elected to make the USB charging cable for the Switch a standard USB cable plug without bothering to pay attention to how that would affect the kickstand usage. There would've been a very simple fix for this:
1. A "flat plug" USB connector, where the bulky part of the cable is at a 90 degree angle to the actual plug. Headphones have had plugs like this for decades.
2. Flip-out "stabilizer" feet on the bottom of the Switch unit to clear the width of the USB cable so it can stand up while charging.
I'm not even an engineer and yet the solution seems obvious to me. It's something Nintendo's engineers should have caught and corrected in the prototype phase.
4448655
Possibility 2 isn't really practical due to the amount of clearance that would be required.
Possibility 1?
First, I'll say that I agree with you that a 90-degree bent would be a pretty good way around this issue. However, I will counter by saying that the majority of USB Type-C cables with a 90-degree bent are produced by manufacturers that I have never heard of and would be disinclined to trust (if only because of a lack of personal experience), that a fair number of them use so much plastic in their design that there is no difference between them and an unbent cable, save that the cable goes to one side rather than down, and most importantly, that the angle at which the Switch rests on its kickstand precludes the use of a bent cable anyway because of stability issues.
A slim add-on where the cable connected to the side for passthru would be a practical solution, but would take some amount of engineering, since nobody currently produces anything like this, since no one has ever needed something like this before. That's the hazard of doing something new.
4448724 I am sorry to say they were. I saw it on YouTube, and they carved a Tri-Force in it while playing a racing game, though they were funny while doing it.
They bought a second one to give away to the viewers for destroying the first however.
4448724 These guys have an entire YT channel devoted to destroying things with a waterjet. They carved a Tri-Force into it.
4448775 Hmm. Yeah. And realistically, changing the design of the Switch so the charging port is anywhere else on the device isn't even an option...
4448820
They probably figured it was fine, since 99% of all mobile devices put the charge port on the bottom.
Realistically, they probably could have put it on the top and still kept everything mostly the same with a slight (on-paper) modification to the base station, but then the connection would've been through a component that either slid or swiveled. The Switch can be damaged, sure, but barring an electrical short or physical trauma in excess of design parameters, the base station will never stop working because it's guts are completely solid state.
4448643
The way I see it, it's not necessarily the placement of the port by itself that is a fault, but the combination of that placement with a straight plug on the charging cable and a kickstand that can't possibly work with such a protrusion.
As Mythrilmoth says, an angled plug would have immensely reduced the protrusion and made it possible to accommodate it without redesigning the kickstand all that much. People started designing ways around this, the minute the switch was in everybody's hands, so why couldn't Nintendo's engineers do that in the months they had during the design phase. It's not as if Nintendo is new to the market of handheld devices and thus had no idea what their customers would likely want to do with it.
i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/nbxaat7oxzs94yvbbvzq.png
That possibility aside, what could have been done with the charging port itself? Off the top of my head, my first thought is a recessed slit with contacts at the back of the device into which a protrusion from the back of the docking station slides up, as the handheld portion is inserted. While the form factor would be proprietary, make the contacts compatible with USB specs, and you'd only need a tiny plastic adapter to charge it with any existing USB A/micro/C charger out there.
4448903 Well yeah, because its guts consist of a single circuitboard with three connectors...
4449049 Only problem with that (your theory, not the thing in the picture) is that would've let to a lot of Switches destroyed because the charging protrusion snapped off inside the Switch unit.
4449056
Why would it? Such a solution is not inherently more fragile than the charging port protruding from the bottom of the dock – and nobody is suggesting that shouldn't exist, because it'll just break off in the handheld unit.
4449077 Maybe we have a crossed signal or something here, but what I'm saying is anything that involves a longer tab jutting out of a piece of plastic can and does lead to instances of said tab being snapped off by improper handling/excessive force.
4449077 4449143
The charging connection that exists in the dock only barely holds the tablet down. (I would have to look at one to see how it actually appears to function, and will not be able to do so for another week due to business travel)
Improper handling could potentially damage this connection, but we're talking a completely lateral force; if there were any angular velocity, the tablet would either be pushed down into the base station (still potentially causing damage to the tablet housing or base station) or would be knocked up and out of it (still potentially causing damage to the tablet housing, screen, etc.). As I said, until I can look at one, I'm drawing from a memory that I admit is not very good here. Contrast with something that connects outward to the back that would leave the tablet with no room to roll, the incidence of the connecting breaking off in the tablet's port would be significantly higher.
Final time, I don't have a base station in front of me and won't for another week, so what I outlined above should be considered speculation and not necessarily correct.
Prior to this, I would have said that Nintendo's problem is it always overplays its gimmicks while relying too heavily on its IPs.
Honestly I thought "take this tablet anywhere, or else plug it in and play with all your friends" was a cool idea. But then, I actually like the Wii U as well, and the gamepad's range is...not that far from the TV.
4458079 Well, on paper the Switch IS a good idea, aside from its abysmal storage and battery life. There's just...kinks to iron out...yeah.
4458164 And I'll just bet the Switch Lite will have a brighter screen, too.
4458221 Probably.