Those who’ve been following the whole cracked DS Lite hinge saga over the past week or two will no doubt have noticed that Nintendo are bowing to mob demand on this one. For those who came in late, though, there’s been a few cases of the back right hinge of the handheld developing a small crack - apparently it’s due to the open-locking piece of plastic, which resides within the hinge. Whatever the case, those who have had it happen to them are adamant that it’s nothing to do with their own treatment of the unit. Nintendo seemed initially unwilling to believe this claim, putting it down to user mistreatment and pointing out that the warranty doesn’t cover this, but the outcry over the past couple of weeks seems to have changed their minds, and they’re now offering free replacement.
The exact number of people affected by this seems to be entirely in question though - given that the DS Lite has been out since March in Japan, it seems strange that it’s only been raised as an issue now. Nintendo have stated that only 1 in 5000 units have the issue - that’s a 0.02% fault rate, which is well below the accepted electronics industry standard of 4%. Then again, a Kotaku poll came up with stats showing that almost 10% of people polled had the cracked hinge, so who knows? Of course, it’s all very easy to dismiss those numbers - I didn’t vote, mainly out of laziness because I don’t have the problem. I’d imagine those who did care enough to vote were more than likely either:
- People devastated by the cracked hinge.
- Nintendo fanboys defending their company’s image.
or - Sony fanboys trashing Nintendo’s image.
Just a guess though - or maybe just my general mistrust of fanboyism. Still, it’s not a great look when the display DS Lites in the Nintendo World Store in New York have the problem. At least it is only a cosmetic flaw though. The crack won’t affect the stability of the unit, or compromise it’s structure in any way, nor will it impede gameplay in any fashion.
Speaking of impeded gameplay though, Sony held a press conference for regarding the PSP last Friday at the San Diego Comic-Con (boom tssssshish). Entitled PSP University, the talk contained a few interesting bits, the first of which is this one regarding homebrew development:
Overall it’s frowned on. Our tech guys have gotten madder and madder lately, and it does void your warranty.
So, yeah. Anyone trying to use the PSP for the only things it’s good for, namely; emulation, homebrew games and watching movies from a Memory Stick in high resolution…stop it. You’re pissing off the tech guys. God only knows why Sony insists on keeping up this chase of firmware upgrade after firmware upgrade.
The most interesting little snipit was this one, kindly paraphrased by Shacknews:
Sony stated that in the United States, PSP is about a million units ahead of Nintendo DS, though a representative admitted that DS Lite had a particularly strong debut showing.
Well, that’s a very…interesting statement. According to the latest figures, the DS is actually in front by about 200,000, or there-abouts. So unless Sony’s counting the units shipped, it seems blatantly untrue. Mind you, I suppose we should all expect that from Sony’s marketing, given their showing of the past few months. To cap it off, it’s hard not to notice the specific talk of the US market - there’s a pretty good reason for that one, and that’s the fact that Nintendo have sold a staggering 21 million DSs since November 2004. Nintendo themselves put it best when they commented in their press release that it means they’ve sold “23 systems per minute – that’s nearly one every two seconds – non-stop since launch”. Huge.