The company dbrand has taken to Reddit to inform of a very serious issue they have come across while working on skin prototypes for the new Nintendo Switch. According to their tests, the plastic material that covers the console and the joy-cons is extremely sensitive to any adhesives, presenting very noticeable damage when it is put in contact with stickers, vinyls and other similar products.
On their message, the company tells how they received a Nintendo Switch unit three days ago, and they immediately started working on their prototypes for the console. After testing a couple of their designs they saw how the outer coating began to peel off. The damage appeared both on the joy-cons and the main body of the console.
Not only that, but other type of materials like the paint of the Nintendo Switch logo on the back of the console also presented obvious damage after applying their prototypes, meaning that the whole surface of the console where skins would be normally applied would get immediate damage, making their products unfit to sell to the public.
Under no circumstances should you be buying a vinyl skin / wrap for your Nintendo Switch
As Nintendo had warned them that the unit they received was not the final build, they waited until release day to test their vinyls on retailer units. After purchasing ten consoles, the same marks started to appear in all of them when they tested their products on them.
With such unfortunate results, the company has taken the drastic decision of cancelling all preorders of their Nintendo Switch skins and abandon all their future plans for the console. Clients who made an early order of a product will receive a refund for their payment, while all items related to the console have been taken off the company’s website.
While understandably disappointed, the company hopes that this experience will prevent their users from having any incident with any skin that they purchase for their consoles, and the statement that they are making is very clear: “We’re here to make a public service announcement that under no circumstances should you be buying a vinyl skin / wrap for your Nintendo Switch.”
However, it’s worth noting that after hearing about these issues, another company called PDP has confirmed that their officially licensed Zelda skin for Nintendo Switch has been successfully tested on the console, and assures that their clients have nothing to fear.
Will this issue become a generalized problem for the console? Sadly, as the problem is related to the components used to build the device, it will not likely be solved until Nintendo releases a complete revision of the system, unless they take emergency measures.
