Nintendo's newest hybrid console was released March 3, opening up to great sales figures and subsequent forecast of the console's supposed positive market performance. While the Switch's initial success rate spells an amiable opportunity for Nintendo to pedal toward the industry at a jet's pace, it's not without its share of troubled spots.
Nintendo Switch Dock Causes Scratches
Take something as simple as the dock, for instance. For the uninitiated, every Nintendo Switch unit comes with a hunk of plastic to place the system into for home console play. This is essential to the system's sales pitch — it can be a home console when rested inside its dock and a handheld device when pulled out from it. But the peripheral, which allows its selling point to manifest, has been reported to have a frustrating design flaw.
First, several people have complained that the railings inside the dock had scuffed the Switch's plastic screen, which then resulted into several scratches on the display's surface. While people have come up with their own makeshift DIY solutions to the scratching problem, they're still wondering how such an obvious design flaw made it into Nintendo's quality checking process. Such an issue is fundamentally problematic because sliding in and out of the dock is the Switch's visual motto.
Reggie Fils-Aimé, Nintendo of America's president, finally addressed the scratching issue in a new interview with Time. He has reiterated the company's objective to get as much people spewing out feedback as possible. However, Fils-Aimé stated that the scratching problem wasn't present in his and his team's experiences.
"As soon as I heard of this report, I asked my teams, 'Have we seen this in our own experience?' And the candid answer has been no," he said. "So throughout all of those experiences, throughout all the docking and undocking we've done, we haven't seen it."
"So this is one where if it is happening, we want to understand more as to what the specific situation is," he said, again pushing users to turn to Nintendo's customer support site if the scratching problem occurs.
Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Connectivity Issues
Before the release of the Switch, review units, as usual, were sent to a handful of members of the press. Everything was apparently fine, save for a few criticisms here and there, though they were mostly subjective. Except for one apparently widespread hardware problem: the Joy-Con's desyncing issue.
Specifically, it was found that the left Joy-Con disconnected at random intervals. Speculation suggests that the problem stems from the Bluetooth signal being too weak, which led others to believe that the problem wasn't going to be fixed by a software patch sometime in the future. To its credit, Nintendo acknowledged the problem and offered a few measures, but the problems still persists today.
"First, we've seen the inquiries, and we here in the Americas are looking at all the information we can get our hands on," said Fils-Aimé. He adds that the company is gathering as much feedback as it can, stating that customers with problems should head over to Nintendo's support page.
"[W]e are aware of and have seen some of the reports. We're asking consumers a lot of questions," he said. "[W]e are in a fact-finding mode, to really understand the situation and the scenarios. And with that information, we'll look and see what the next steps are."
The Nintendo of America president also touched upon other future features such as video capture, video broadcasting, and save file transfers, although a tad bit too vaguely.
"We are always in active discussions, but we have nothing to announce right now."
The Nintendo Switch is available now for $299.
