Nintendo offers a repair subscription for the Switch in Japan

Nintendo offers a repair subscription for the Nintendo Switch in Japan. For about one and a half euros per month, users can request six repairs with a maximum value of about 700 euros. They do not pay anything extra besides the monthly amount.

The service includes the Nintendo Switch console, its variants and its accessories. Users can cancel the subscription at any time after purchasing their console. It applies not only to wear and tear, but also to fall and water damage. Of course there are exceptions for the service: existing defects in the hardware are not remedied after taking out a subscription, for example. After a ‘stand-alone’ repair, you can subscribe.

A common problem with the Nintendo Switch is that the analog sticks of the Joy-Cons exhibit so-called drift: they then pass input without the user manipulating the stick. However, Nintendo seems to fix this problem for the customer free of charge, even if the warranty has expired. That was stated by Vice Games in 2019 based on internal Nintendo documents. Anecdotes about free stick drift repairs from Nintendo are also easy to find on the web. So effectively, this repair service is actually about everything except stick drift.

Nintendo furthermore does not motivate the offer, even when requested to do so, by, for example, IGN. There, the company only reports that the service is only available in Japan and they have nothing to announce about the development of similar services outside the country. As far as is known, Sony and Microsoft do not offer a similar service with their consoles.