Nintendo Switch Yay or Nay?

kevink808 said:

Paul_Blythe said:

If the user insists on jamming It in like a three year old playing with blocks, then damage is to be expected.

Good point! The target market of 5 year olds shouldn't have this problem.

True, but after watching some of the YouTube videos, you have to wonder about the parental guidance being given :)

A bit off-topic, but does anyone have the NES Classic Edition? I'm thinking of getting it for myself and my son who is 4 as his first introduction to videogames, but people are scalping the shit out of it online still!  $200+?  That's a bit much for an 8-bit blast from the past.

kevink808 said:

WHY does it scratch in its own dock in the first place? QA dept asleep? Rushed to market without field-testing?...

I think it's fair to say our concerns that the system looked to be rushed to market have been proven to be more accurate than not. The way that NOA and the other divisions are fielding questions and concerns, and just the simple break down videos points to a system with a very short (rushed) dev cycle. The implosion of the Wii-U must have spooked NOJ management more than they are willing to admit.

weasel47 said:

It's not necessarily a widespread problem.  It might have been
someone with a bad dock.  As far as I know, the issue has only been
reported by one person...

I am sorry at this point you must see that it is not "only a few reports" - when you see Amazon offering refunds, and a hoard of videos showing the 'Bricked' or Broken console in the wild, as well as the issues with screen/scratches, remote connectivity and now the tether cord issues and we have to face facts that there are some problems, that even the hardest "fan" of NOA will have to recognize.

I totally understand that all major consoles have issues on launch, and a measure of the credibility and professionalism of the developers is how they handle the calls for support and the refund/repair. Any company worth its salt will offer a professional repair program, and not try and ignore the customers calls for support ;) . 

We have to remember that the Xbone went through a horrendous repair and failure period after launch, and some issues were never properly resolved until some time onwards (and after they dropped Kinect II)! Let's see how much these teething issues multiply with the next game release and if they can impact the avalanche of interest in this console?

From the tare-down videos I've watched, the main Switch unit doesn't look rushed, but that could easily be Nvidia's doing. However, the Dock and Joy-cons do appear to have had a shortened development and test cycle. 

For the minimal amount of hardware that's inside the Dock, a smaller more portable dock would have been possible, and maybe preferable. The charging dock for the Wii U controller is great, adding in the circuitry for the Switch wouldn't have increased its size by much. 

From a protection point of view [while playing docked], the enclosed dock makes sense. Though the very nature of an enclosed dock is asking for trouble, as your required to slide the device into place. We know how that one's playing out.

Joy-cons ... well, the sync issue with the left unit just speaks of poor hardware design choice. The routing of the PCB etched antenna is very poor [and the main issue]. There does look like a spot for a mounted antenna, but this is soldered over, probably being left off for cost cutting. A single 2.45GHz flexible antenna is ~£5, this drops to ~£1 for 5000 units. How much per unit when buying Millions ?.. 

For the future... Could see a Pro version coming along with more internal storage [64GB], then a hardware revision [2019 possibly] to swap over to the the newer Tegra Parker SoC... X-rays of the current SoC are in, and looks like its a standard Tegra X1. Utilising the Parker, wouldn't necessarily ensure extra compute power, but more likely extra battery life.

The Xbox 360 might have been a better example to cite in this instance. The RRoD fiasco is possibly one of gaming's most well known console launch misdemeanors of all time.   :D

I remember having to open them up, grab some pennies, wrap them in tape and then place on the chips with some thermal paste. I did this for quite a few consoles and it worked.

Ok, so I decided to buy one of these for my son's 5th birthday in December.  I don't want to risk running into the holiday rush and inventory shortages which are inevitable since this will no doubt be the hot toy this season.  But damn, it's hard to find.  Same with the Nintendo Classic.

I'll be getting a nintendo.

Cyber don't buy one just yet, let them fix the left joycon controller.

I'm enjoying mine. There was no way I was going to skip Zelda for the first time.. Nintendo will always be able to sell consoles to me as long as they keep churning out Zeldas

They are getting Skyrim!!! what!! Man if someone made skyrim for oculus I would be on that like a fat kid on a cupcake....  (with touch support of course)