alt Hacker NewsI think the more likely explanation is that there was not sufficient market motiviation to include the additional requirement of a user-swappable battery. ie. people care, but they don't care enough or in enough volume for Nintendo to decide it's required.
I celebrate user-swappable batteries and I think I like the battery regulations. I just don't think the Ghost of Iwata is under your bed twirling a Wario moustache while thinking about how to screw you over. The current Switch battery situation is simply a result of user-swappable not being a requirement, among the countless other requirements already in contention.
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As mentioned elsewhere, it's also important to remember that the batteries were fully serviceable - available for purchase, nicely compartmentized and with easy connectors. The products were definitely not designed to die with their batteries. They just weren't compliant with the new rules - this is quite different than a certain fruit company that have historically made battery replacements difficult for even service technicians to complete without consequences like constant user prompts.
I imagine the various products had their specific own conflicts with the rules, like requiring too much disassembly (the Pro controller in particular has to be disassembled from the front first), or the Switch 2 holding the battery with double-sided tape. Not to mention that you might not realize that the screw are JIS spec, stripping them with the Philips screwdriver you found in your drawer. Also triwing.
This doesn't really take into account the real history around user replaceable batteries. It's been happening for years and when there are no alternatives to choose from its not a "vote with your wallet" situation. For example at some point MacBooks just stopped shipping with replaceable batteries and its disingenuous to expect someone to then switch to Dell, Lenovo, or something else. Those platforms can't run MacOS so the choice was made for the users. If you depend on MacOS and the software that runs on it, then your choice was clear--buy a new MacBook with a glued battery.
How would you ever measure market motivation in such a small market that has max 2-4 viable alternatives?
The market mechanism breaks down in such circumstances.
Consumers do not decide anything, they will buy whatever is in the store.
I mean, XBOX has been doing replaceable batteries in joysticks since forever.
I have both a PS5 and an XBOX Series X. Whenever I am playing if I get out of battery on the XBOX, I just change them. In the PS5 is not possible.
I don't get what the advantage is.
Disagree. The market will not decide on that, at least for the nintendo product. Your or your kid want the switch and the pokemon and mario and others game, you're buying the switch, you don't switch to something else because the something else allows battery switch.
That's Nintendo's entire business model and the reason why they've been thriving since for ever in gaming and even the bad times where actually positive cash flow wise. They're not losing a single sale because the battery cannot be replaced, unless that sale was far from guaranteed to begin win.