No stranger to all sorts of aggravating issues, Nintendo Switch owners have been suffering from yet another catastrophe as their consoles have now been cracking as opposed to merely bending, the problems seemingly evolving over time…
Initially noticed by one website, the site questioned their Twitter followers whether their Switch consoles also developed cracks along the top of the device, to which the response was overwhelming – the initial questioning tweet:
The abundance of replies:
Numerous users even had cracking along the left side of the device:
While the cause of the horrid problem has not been identified, many are already theorizing overheating to once again be the issue…
“Made in China”©
With China quality plastic construction.. not even good plastic at that.
No, ABS is ABS. The material characteristic such as tensile strength is constant. ABS is so cheap that the manufacturer never needs to cheap out. It’s the engineer who designed the chassis designed certain part of structure too thin. Many things are made in China with ABS. Most of the things in my car (plastic, rubber etc) are 90% if not 95% made in China. If you ever own a 3D Printer and actually print lot of things with it, especially for parts that used in robotics, electronics etc, you will see that even 3D printed prototype with a $20 spool of ABS (made in China) purchased in Amazon can be very strong. It looks like a design false, If it is the problem of “cheap plastic” the entire chassis would crack and break into pieces. It is what happens with one design things too thin. With such thickness, it’s the best to go with aluminum or at least uses an aluminum frame to reinforce the chassis with full aluminum plating the corners and areas that will suffer certain types of mechanical stress (usually tensile stress).
China plastic probably doesn’t even deserves to be called plastic
Next article will be about burned house (Apple) or explosion (Made in PRC). It is normal. Over 1 year.. and console cracks… And i thougth it will be about unblocked illegal games…
bullshit, well build devices do not break like this.
This is clearly cutting cost with cheap ass plastic and build quality.
i would expect the plastic for a handheld device that is know to be carried around to last at least 5 years.
What? It is normal? The f♥♥k you on about? It should not be normal for consoles to just crack over usage and time. I never seen my consoles break or crack over time.
It actually is normal for plastic encased consoles to crack and/or discolour over time……depending on the type of plastic used. They usually just don’t crack this fast though. All materials eventually degrade. Some just take an inordinately longer amount of time to do so than others is all.
My Atari 2800 (1982) has no cracks in the plastic and it still turns on and plays games. I didn’t know accepting companies making things out of cheap crap was the acceptable norm these days.
That’s weird, my launch day PSP still has it’s case in perfect condition…
got a 3ds and a ps vita with 3+ years each. no cracks so far and I use then regularly.
“Some just take an inordinately longer amount of time to do so than others is all”. It’s more like, “switch will crack in a year or so, everything else can be eternal”
I have several GBA consoles with only scuff marks, they’re cheaping out.
my n64 (1996) has no cracks at all…even so my SNES (1992)…so…about what time are we talking here? 100 years?
Wonder how much these people even used their nintendo switch. I use mine pretty often, in docked or handheld mode… no cracks. Maybe im just not playing it as much as these people… But seriously…. What the f♥♥k have they been doing with it?
exactly I’ve had mine for almost a year, played hand held and docked, docked it does get hot but I’ve never seen any damage on mine, people need to not over extend gameplay and learn how to cool they’re switches down correctly and not leave them in the dock to cool down.
Having so many cases of cracks being in nearly precisely same spots, does not fall under the “Users don’t know how to use” category.
But of course, you won’t consider that, since apparently you handled yours soo -well- that it got no cracks whatsoever.
Gotta focus on that tiny ego-boost and say “Mine didn’t break, I wonder how they did managed to do that lol”
You are so right.. cracks are in similar areas and that chip that is so half triangle shaped is way too straight not to be a defect in the plastic. That shape looks like maybe where mold is put together it’s too straight. This is wrong type of plastic used.
Here come the apologists.
Well, what the f♥♥k have they been doing with it?
They’re already using their personal experience as the ultimate basis, gotta love em.
Thermal cycling and materials not being flexible enough to handle expanding and contracting over time.
I’ve only ever played mine in dock mode. Never took it out once and now I’m kinda scared to do so. Looks fine still and I have gamed long hours in it too.
It should be fine as long as you don’t bend it.
this is why you never buy day one or year one always wait, and save money
*v1.0.
At least wait for rev1.5 or rev2.0 hardware.
I think they use laptop type plastic. Those will break when conditions are met.
There are reasons why most smartphones has softer and thinner cases or metal cases. hard plastic isn’t the best materials for gaming devices.
A metal frame to take the stress of the joycons would help solve this it would not even have to be a billet aluminum part even a pressed steel or cast zinc frame and going with nylon or HDPE for the slide part since it’ll flex vs crack would help a lot.
Probably that ABS plastic crap.
I agree like I said in my last comment they need to use some more steel that does not bend and stays in place.
Some cars use plastic intakes which happens to work just fine, not everyting needs to be steel or other metals
Intake, exactly. It’s meant to stay cool, not expand and contract a lot over time due to thermals.
you only need to use a little bit, to let it last a little longer.
Yeah, that’s an engineering design fail not manufacturing or material.
Though in the engineer’s defense he was probably pushed to make it as thin as possible and not to worry about thermal expansion.