It seems to be worse than that. Get a second hand console and it maybe already bricked as it looks like they only ban the console not the account. As per the lawsuit.

No. If you happen to try to fix it by doing a system wipe you play zero games. It's literally a brick. Can't do anything.

Nintendo started phoning it in about halfway through the Wii's lifespan and never quit. Every game is now a huge sandbox and playing with the physics is the game. I'm on edge with Odyssey. I think there's some fine Marioing to be had in it, but a lot of it feels very empty, surface-level and rushed... like everything they do since, I dunno, BOTW.

• Kirby, Metroid and the titles they let other companies develop for them are an obvious exception... but those are few and far between since the 3DS era ended.

Same. I got a Switch so my partner and I could play games with their sister. It collects dust as it turns out my partner has no interest in learning to play games and I can play modded Switch games with better graphics on my PC.

Same situation for me. Buying a switch was a big regret after getting a Steam deck.

The only thing my switch is good for is playing the Nintendo archive games for N64 or Game Boy or whatever

all the new games I've tried suck, and that's a tough pill at the price. to be fair, I haven't tried that many

Until the rich find a ditch, yes.

Without online functionality, the system might as well be bricked. I'm not 100% so someone can fact check but I'm reasonably certain it will refuse to let you play any software you've downloaded and only allow you use physical carts without the option to update them. When 90% of a console is built around online activity, being able to remotely disable that makes the console useless.

For the switch 2 it’s far more restrictive from the few videos I’ve seen where people have used flash carts and gotten banned. For one, a good deal of the games don’t exist on physical media even if you purchase physical copies. So an online ban means that if the console is ever reset for any reason those games are done. No updates obviously.

Though I do think some physical games will work without needing a digital “receipt” at least to activate and play, so you are correct in that the console isn’t entirely useless after being banned, just significantly limited in functionality and restricts you from playing a majority of your game library (even if 99% of those games have no online component)

That last point is the kicker for me. There should be regulation on this. If you’re sony/nintendo/microsoft and you’re pissed I modified my console and want to ban me because I might cheat online? Fine, I guess. If you want to ban me from making purchases because you’re afraid I spoofed the purchasing system? Ban me from making purchases, I guess. But you should never be able to ban me from redownloading titles I have purchased legitimately.

Frankly the 3ds freeshop fiasco (which, unlike switch freeshops that rely on external servers, was a system that spoofed nintendos purchase authentication ticketing system and allowed downloading directly from their servers) has likely made nintendo overly wary. The counterpoint to this though is that nintendo handled that situation terribly. The freeshop worked for years. They sent a dmca takedown almost immediately for the software but obviously people kept hosting copies. It took them almost 2 years to patch and at that point the 3ds was basically dead.

Imagine sony or microsoft in the same situation: their console is exploited with a softmod. They’re already probably working on a hardware revision to stop the softmod. But then an exploit comes out that allows modded users to download literally any game, update, or dlc from their servers, for free? They’d have that patched in weeks, maybe days (though tbf they’d probably also issue tons of bans here)

So essentially nintendo is overcorrecting because in the past they’ve made boneheaded security decisions and responded to people exploiting them like idiots. That’s not anyone’s fault but nintendos and it doesn’t mean they should be allowed to be super hostile to consumers. Fuck the switch 2

You are correct. A banned Switch 2 is severely limited in what it can do, but it is not "bricked."

If the banned system is reset like in a trade-in then even offline games will not work.

When the physical games require downloading to start using them, I think that starts crossing lines into bricking territory even if it's not entirely accurate.