this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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If you design a product to be intentionally difficult to repair, using subpar parts, is it not planned obsolescence? I really don't get what you are about there. Unless you require some sort of an internal clock to force brick the device to be considered planned?
Everything else is correct and I agree.
It's not planned obsolescence if your device is meant to last for decades. You could argue about the joycon if they had done that on purpose, but given that they ended up having to replace a bunch of them it seems pretty likely that their business model is to sell you four pairs to play with friends, not to keep reselling you more as they break.
Nintendo's business is not based on the product becoming worse artificially to upsell you on a replacement. Their model is to keep making incremental replacements and then drop a generational upgrade every decade or so. That's not how planned obsolescence works. You don't get artificial performance degradation, deliberately fragile parts or artifical restrictions to repair via signed components. People can (and many do) repair Nintendo hardware on third party repair services with third party replacement parts, and from what iFixIt is saying that doesn't seem to have changed.
Which is not to say Nintendo put ANY thought into repairability here. They clearly expect you to buy a Switch 2 and keep it until you buy a Switch 2 Lite. This thing is very new and that may yet change in both directions. But so far all I see here is the same old "we built this to be cheap and durable", which is fundamentally not Apple's "you'll buy one of these every two years and if it breaks you will come to us for a replacement and like it" approach.
I mean, it's clearly not meant to last decades given the battery situation.