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Nintendo To Replace Wiimote Wrist Straps
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 15, 2006 09:54 AM
from the avoiding-flying-wiimotes-seems-like-a-good-thing dept.
from the avoiding-flying-wiimotes-seems-like-a-good-thing dept.
Kotaku has word that, after much giggling and photo-taking, Nintendo is replacing all of the Wiimote straps shipped with the original release of the console. There is a strap replacement form available, to get new straps sent to you. From the article: "Once your replacement wrist strap has shipped, you will receive a confirmation email from Nintendo. We expect to begin shipping replacement straps around December 21st. It will take 5 to 9 days for delivery depending on your location. Please do not contact Nintendo regarding your replacement wrist strap until after that time period has passed. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your interest in our products." Update: 12/15 17:07 GMT by Z : I used the right term here in the text, but Edge Online notes that recall is not the right term to use here. Title corrected.
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Two Weeks with the Wii 458 comments
In the 80s, kids of my generation cut their teeth on Super Mario Bros.. They went through high school with Mario Kart, and bonded with college friends playing Super Smash Bros. By 1999, though, the N64 had long since proven that Nintendo's dominance in American videogaming was over. The GameCube that followed was largely a disappointment. Nintendo failed to interest third party developers, and frustrated fans with long-delayed chapters of the Mario, Zelda, and Metroid franchises. Coming into this no-longer-next generation of consoles, Nintendo announced they were aiming for a Revolution, and then confused everyone by renaming it Wii. Their actions left a lot of people wondering if the company still had what it took to compete with committed powerhouses like Microsoft and Sony. The launch lineup is kind of tepid, and the controls really do take some getting used to. We've already established that they're not aiming to compete in the graphics race. So what is the console really like? Why is it selling so quickly? What does it have to offer? I've had two weeks to find out. Read on, so that you can get a feel for the system you'll definitely be playing (if not owning) at some point in the future.
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U.S. Safety Commision 'Keeping an Eye' on the Wii 102 comments
In the wake of this past week's offer from Nintendo to replace our Wiimote straps, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says they'll be keeping an eye on the situation in the future. For the time being they are satisfied with Nintendo's handling of the problem. Just the same, Kotaku reports that the organization wants to make sure there aren't a lot of subsequent 'flying Wiimote' incidents. From the article: "Because Nintendo self-reported the issue, the commission will not do its own investigation unless new issues crop up with the new strap. 'If the problem continues with the new strap that's where we might step in," she said. "We also would have to decide if it's a safety issue.' Vallese added that that means that if remotes were, for instance, smashing into a television hard enough to cause the tube to explode or somehow stop working in a dangerous way, it could also be deemed a safety issue."
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Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
Though... Penny Arcade explained the reasons better... http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/29 [penny-arcade.com]
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Beat me to it. More kudos to Nintendo. (Score:5, Insightful)
But this replacement is something else that makes Nintendo win kudos from me. Not only are they not playing the CPU/graphics/power marketing bullsh*t, they're actually going to take the time and financial expense of replacing items that as far as I'm concerned they are not responsible for replacing. They're taking the high road. In fact, they tower above those idiots at Sony. Remember their rootkit attitude? "If you don't know it's there, it shouldn't bother you. What's all the fuss about?"
Just because of things like this, I'll be more apt to pay for things like the virtual console instead of trying to hack it to play older games for free. Actions like this deserve loyalty and honest purchases.
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Re:Beat me to it. More kudos to Nintendo. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that.
My karma's fine, so I have no need for astroturfing. How's your karma? Oh, wait. You posted AC. Nevermind.
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Re:Beat me to it. More kudos to Nintendo. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reason being, in some shops I get a friendly hello when I walk in, and often stand and chat to shop owners that I have a decent relationship with. It costs more yes, but good relationships and customer service mean a lot to me.
Companies who look after their customers well are few and far between in the large corporate world, so if Nintendo are trying to do this, then I appreciate it.
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
I love Nintendo and I mostly agree with what you've said, but I do think Nintendo made a bit of a mis-step here. True, the owners are getting 'over excited' and they aren't using it correctly. I do feel, though, that Nintendo does share at least some of responsibility about it.
I don't imagine my opinion will be too popular, so I'll explain my thought process a little better. (Hopefully this'll prove at least that I'm not intentionally trying to troll.) I've been thinking about this a lot over the last week after being bombarded with pictures of broken TV's and black eyes. The first question I asked myself was: "How would I feel if this were Sony in Nintendo's shoes?" The answer is: "Geez, they're hyping up natural motion of the controller and it didn't occur to them to use thicker straps?!" I'm trying to be fair, I don't want to praise Nintendo for something I wouldn't forgive Sony for.
I think Nintendo should have included the thicker straps originally. But I have to be honest, this isn't exactly a big dramatic issue with me. If Nintendo had never responded to the breaking straps issue, I wouldn't have paid much attention to it. This is more of a 'hindsight is 20/20' thought than some opinion blown out of proportion.
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that they have reacted properly but let's not place the blame on anyone here. Nintendo underestimated the response, gamers were excited and engaged, an unforseen problem happened, and Nintendo resolved it. End of story.
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
Go watch this video [youtube.com], then tell me it's normal behavior. (Make sure you have the sound on so you can hear the heart-sinking WHAM!) Excited or not, I don't think anyone reasonably expected players to be trying to throw 100 MPH pitches!
Although, I find it interesting that every case of strap breakage has had only one outcome for the Wiimote: It still works! I mean, if you watch the video above, you'd think that it's in a million pieces after that. Nope, he picks it up and tries to throw another 100 MPH pitch. (!)
Of course Nintendo realized that. That's why there are 3,462.70871 warnings about clearing your space, wearing the wrist strap, not using the Nunchuck for this game, etc. Nintendo just didn't expect people to throw with enough force to break their straps and send their Wiimotes crashing through thick panes of glass.
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually what I find the oddest about this situation. Nintendo has, historically, made extremely durable hardware. Much more durable than there is any sane justification for. I remember way back in the day a letter to Nintendo Power about a family who (somehow, accidentally) ran over their NES with a Lincoln Continental. They had to unscrew it and re-seat the casing so cartriges would fit, but then it worked just fine. Who on earth would expect that? Here you see someone throwing a controller full force directly into a wall, and it works just fine.
Hence I'm rather surprised that the wiimote strap wasn't over-engineered beyond what Nintendo expected people would do such that it would still manage quite well when abused in ways Nintendo hadn't imagined. If instead of videos of the wrist strap breaking, YouTube had videos of people hooking the strap over something and doing pullups on it, I would not have been surprised.
Given their history and engineering standards, it's quite possible that from Nintendo's persective they do consider this a failure on their part.
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Informative)
Also a quick google for "gameboy iraq" will pull up a number of refferences to the gameboy that the Nintendo World Store in NYC has on display. The thing is fusedtogether after going through a bombing of a barak in desert storm. The awsome part is that it still plays tetris (sure, it needs an AC adapter, and some of the lines are dead, but it is still awsome
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't the first time they've done such a thing, nor the biggest. The Famicom recall [wikipedia.org] of 1983 set a precedent, after which Microsoft's failure to promptly recall the Xbox when it had launch problems probably was what really cost themthe Japanese market. After that, recalling a bunch of piddly wrist straps that cost more to ship than they do to manufacture is nothing.
And in fact, this is how Japanese businesses typically behave in the Japanese market. Taking responsibility, sometimes more than they deserve blame for, and making it right, even if it means the president of the company has to go from Okinawa to Hokkaido and personally ring doorbells and apologize to everyone who was wronged.
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Re:Someone show this to Sony (Score:5, Informative)
No, this isn't how every Japanese business behaves. Many companies have covered up and denied problems, it's no different than Western companies. In fact, it's customary for companies there to cover up problems, quietly address them and release those fixes in subsequent models. Mitsubishi a few years ago was discovered to be covering up defects in their automobiles. I think one of their own veteran test drivers, who had been very loyal to the company ultimately helped to disclose these problems. There have been cases where people have gotten sick at restaurants and they offer a palty sum of money, not even enough to cover medical expenses. And, the last time I check Sony was a Japanese company and they've tried covering up countless problems and in fact have often failed to recall defective products.
If anything, it's easier for companies to get away with this in Japan than it is in the US because Japanese are a lot less likely to become vocal and try to fight a big company. They certianly don't engage in lawsuits like Americans do.
I do agree, however, that when someone is has been uncovered of wrongdoing they will openly apologize for it. In the US corporate management will deny everything and make excuses to the bitter end. In Japan they'll hold a press conference and make a direct apology to everyone, stating how they've shamed themselves, their family and their company. You'd never see that in the US. Then again, many Americans think money is the best form of apology and a CEO apologizing would be seen as an admission of guilt and thus paving the way for a lawsuit.
Parent
PA got it right (Score:5, Funny)
Though no matter what the fault here, good for Nintendo to listen to the consumers and actually do something about it. Good PR, IMO.
not a recall (Score:5, Informative)
"As of Monday, anyone who has any problems or concerns about the integrity of their Wii Remote wrist straps can call Nintendo Customer Services for a replacement strap. This is not a product recall. The current wrist strap is fine - it has passed all safely standards and does the job. This is simply a precaution because we are aware of the concerns over their safety. All new Wii Remotes and Wii consoles will ship with the new, thicker wrist strap. Even though the original straps are perfectly adequate for normal play, we can't control the exuberance of players."
Re:not a recall (Score:5, Insightful)
While I mostly agree with you about this (I'm the proud owner of a Wii and I have *never* accidentally let go of the wiimote), there's no question that it's a good move by Nintendo because the wii was designed to be played by lots of people. Like so many others, I've been astounded by how gaming n00bs have totally taken to the wii; my gf (who was certain that the wii would be the end of our relationship) now beats me at Wii Sports Golf regularly. Obviously, I've embraced how easy to pick up and play the wii is, and am happily amazed by how many people play it at parties and get really, really into it.
Having said that (and as much as I love watching people have fun with the new toy), I get really nervous about people getting so into it that they forget they're just playing a game, and I can't count the number of times that n00bs at my house have accidentally let go of the controller, while, say, power bowling. This weekend, a wrist strap finally snapped, and though the wiimote went flying, it thankfully missed the tv and bounced harmlessly off the wall.
Class act by Nintendo! Now I can revel in watching my stupid friends play Nintendo without freaking out on the inside about whether I'm about to end up like one of these guys! [wiihaveaproblem.com]
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just in time (Score:4, Funny)
Alternate solution (Score:4, Funny)
You can't fix stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Go Nintendo (Score:5, Insightful)
Plastic controller covers, Gameboy scratch-protector screens, cracked button in the N64 controller... I've never had to pay for a replacement bit. (whereas other companies would probably make me buy a new controller rather than send me a button) Just speaking from personal experience, but this is quite possibly the #1 reason I'm still a Nintendo fanboy after all these years.
I really feel like companies these days have forgotten the old adage about "you have to spend money to make money." When I was twelve years old, dropped my Gameboy, and cracked the plastic screen cover, they COULD have been jerks and made me pay ten bucks for it. But they didn't. They even swallowed the shipping charges. And then I bought a SNES... and an N64 (sigh)... and a Gamecube...
You get the idea.
Whereas every time I've needed something from Microsoft, it's been like pulling teeth and... (looks around) GEE! No X-Boxes here!
Customer loyalty isn't a myth.
These are simply cases of "dumb" (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone should also view this report:
http://www.nintendojo.com/fullfocus/view_item.php
If the default straps can take that, then people are just really dumb if they manage to break them.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Soooo unlucky.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:"People are stupid" is not an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd almost think that people managed to hang onto these things because letting go is stupid. IMO the problem is that Nintendo put straps on to stop accidental dropping they tried to be helpful and its backfired. The should have just removed the straps so people didn't think "hey this strap must be able to with stand me throwing it really hard, I mean I do that with my digital camera all the time don't I?"
These people are muppets, probably Gonzo.
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