Nintendo charging huge extra for repairs if they detect homebrew on your Wii?
Some recent evidence posted by Wiibrew developer Bushing has revealed that Nintendo may now be charging an extra fee for repairing a homebrew-capable Wii. It’s long been generally believed that homebrew voids warranties, but the issue here seems to be the huge additional repair costs, not the fact that a homebrew-enabled Wii is considered out of warranty. More after the jump.
Some recent evidence posted by Wiibrew developer Bushing has revealed that Nintendo may now be charging an extra fee for repairing a homebrew-capable Wii, as seen in the receipt scan to the right.
Bushing explains, “My GermanÂ’s pretty bad, but I see “Â…. Softwarehack Â… EUR 210″. That seems awfully excessive, given that the price of a new Wii is EUR 250, no?”
The dev also mentioned an email sent last month informing him that Nintendo is indeed now enforcing the “no homebrew” rule. The email explained that since a homebrew-enabled Wii would be considered out of warranty, repair costs could go up by approximately 180 to 210 Euros.
The issue here seems to be the huge additional repair costs, not the fact that a homebrew-enabled Wii is considered out of warranty. Here’s Bushing’s take on this:
This is unacceptable. I was under the impression that most out-of-warranty repairs were in the $75 – $100 range — and this email came with a note saying that the most expensive (common?) repair is to replace the drive for 90€.
Should Nintendo have to pay to repair hacked Wiis under warranty? Maybe not, but they have no (moral) right to gouge customers out of spite for having the HBC installed.
Here’s more:
As some has noted, this creates a financial incentive for anyone with a “Softwarehack”ed Wii ($25 for Nintendo to fix, but they’ll charge you $200) to find a way to damage it further ($85 for Nintendo to fix, but they will only charge you $75).
Related articles:
- Nintendo remains vague on DSi anti-piracy measures
- Team Twiizers: DVDX, HBC still works under System Menu 4.0; Twilight Hack blocked
Via HackMii
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