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I could probably build an entire second career just making videos about

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Nintendo's bad behavior, but the one we're going to look at today is one

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that's going to hit the wallet of nearly every Switch 2 owner, the completely

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unnecessary left turn into proprietary bill that they have taken with the

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Switch 2. While the rest of the game console industry has made serious

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strides toward universal standards and interoperability,

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this dock is a classic example of

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locking down a product not for a good reason, but just because we can or to

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make a buck or because I don't know, you. And the bigger problem here is

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that Nintendo is a market leader and their actions may very well embolden

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other tech companies to do the same. Check this out. This dock here works

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perfectly on the Switch One and in fact every other device on the table and the

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Switch 2. No, no, no. That's the only

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device we were able to find that it won't work with. All of these docs and

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dongles you're looking at now will work with the Switch One or with your laptop,

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but you can't use them on your Switch 2. It would seem then that Nintendo has

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opted to make their new universal serial bus device a little less universal.

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Question is, how? I mean, it's still got a regular type-C connector. So, what's

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happening? To find out, we have the Infinion Protocol Analyzer, a little

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device that intercepts the communication between two USBC PD devices and allows

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us to see exactly what Nintendo has done. Oh, here we go. Normal, normal,

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normal, vendor defined message. >> Mhm. But what the heck is a vendor

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defined message? And what is this message from our sponsor?

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>> Corsair. Their Xenon Edge touchscreen display can sit anywhere on your desk.

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It can mount magnetically to a metal surface and can even be placed inside

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your case. Get instant visibility on system metrics, chat channels, or just

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have your favorite memes on loop. Check it out using our link in the video

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description.

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Let's take a step back and explain the wonders of USB in the modern age, which

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is going to give us some additional context as to why we should be especially mad at Nintendo. Since its

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inception in 1996, USB has been a consistent standard

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that's replaced many connectors with one

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easy to insert connector. There's been tons of

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revisions with increases in power and data delivery as well as more and more

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functionality with each update, all while maintaining a pretty robust

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backwards and forwards compatibility. It's honestly a pretty impressive

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collaboration in an industry of minmaxing profiters. Arguably, its

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biggest change came with the introduction of the USB-C standard,

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which was partially intended to make all USB devices just a little more

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universal. Although there's definitely

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been some snags in the decade plus since the update. In an effort to reduce the

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amount of USBC devices that may fry each other because of voltage

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incompatibilities, the USBC PD or power

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delivery standard was released. As many of you will know, that's a protocol for

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negotiation between two devices to communicate their power and data

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capabilities. Lucas from the Labs just wrote a really fantastic article about

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this handshake. And if you want a little more detail, you should definitely give

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that a read. For now, let's test what's

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actually happening with the Switch 2 to understand what we're working with. Let's test out the Switch 2 and the

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Switch 2 doc first. Mhm. Mhm. And we

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have image. Wow. These two devices meant to work together work together.

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Fantastic. Let's take a look at what all these messages mean. This interface can

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be a little bit overwhelming if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. Um the main thing to know is the

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message column is the messages that are being sent in between the two docs. In

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the power roll we have SNK which is our sync device and SRC which is our source

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device. Uh in this case our source is our dock and our sync is the switch. So

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the first thing we're seeing is the source uh offering up its capabilities.

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So when you look in this pane over here, you can see that it's offering 5, 9, and

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15 volt power. Good. CRC, which you'll see all the way down, just means roger.

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Then our switch is talking SNK, and it's

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looking for object position three, which is the 15 volts of power. We get a

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rodger. We get an accept uh from our dock. We get another rod. Next, we have

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power supply ready, meaning it's get ready to deliver its power. We got our

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rod. Then we have a data roll swap. So now the switch is switching roles. Uh

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and it's kind of taking control of the interaction. Then we get our VCON swap.

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And to oversimplify, it's just another part of kind of the data roll swap. Uh

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we got good, we got good power supply ready. And then we have a little soft

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reset where you can see this SOP prime. That's actually when the USB devices are

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talking to the intermediary devices. So it might be talking to a cable that's in

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between if it's an active cable or uh

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part of the dock or something. So right now it's doing a little soft reset for

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those. Then we have our vendor defined messages. And you can see in this pane

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it's asking for discover identity. And this is the first time that our doc and

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our switch are going to communicate, hey you Nintendo, are you Nintendo device?

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Vendor defined doesn't mean that it's like an exclusive lockdown thing necessarily. Um but it can. And then in

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quick basically we have these vendor defined messages where the doc and the

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switch are going to try and negotiate their DisplayPort mode. Uh it takes

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clearly a lot of vendor defined messages and this is sort of where the things

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become a little unusual. In this case it's going to work and we get a display

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on our screen uh after they've negotiated their modes. But let's take a

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look at what happens when we connect the Switch 2 to a dock that won't work. Now,

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we're going to test out this pretty generic Nucleium USB type-C dongle. You

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can immediately see things are a little bit different. Our dongle gives it source capabilities. The switch requests

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uh based on that. Uh we get our power supply ready, VCON swap, and then the

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data roll swap. And you can see that it's actually in a different order. The VCON and the data roll swap are in a

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different order, which ends up in a reject from the switch. They try this a

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couple times. Eventually, it works. Power supply. We do our little uh

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intermediary soft reset and then we do

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it all again. And that's a little bit strange. Why are we doing it all again?

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Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're getting to our our intermediary reset

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and then we're into our vendor defined stuff. We're find we're trying to find

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who's talking to who uh in specific. Are these Nintendo products? And then we're

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discovering the modes. Uh and this is generally the DisplayPort modes in this

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uh the switch is asking for a specific

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mode. We get connected, we get UFD connected and then it kind of just like

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fizzles out and then it sort of stops communicating. And that's going to be

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kind of a reoccurring pattern where things don't happen in the same order,

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things get confused and then the communication kind of just ceases. Let

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me show you on a monitor. This one's even more clear why things aren't

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working. They're trying to do the data roll swap and there's a rejection

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happening from the switch. These two

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buddies not working together so good. But we're still seeing our pattern that

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the switch has a little bit of a difficulty negotiating when things don't

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go exactly as it's expecting. That means

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only hardware with the exact validated negotiation can decode these messages

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and successfully negotiate a display out from the switch too. And this isn't a

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technical limitation of USBC itself. Most PD devices can navigate these

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operations in different orders and make it work. Rather, I think the most likely

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answer here, and the one that avoids making claims we can't absolutely

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confirm, is that Nintendo made sure that it worked on their own devices and then

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stopped their efforts there. That means that even if a third party doc has the

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correct power delivery and video output capabilities, it just won't fully

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function with the Switch 2 unless it can successfully communicate using Nintendo

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specific undisclosed protocols. This communications lockdown definitely could

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be malicious, but I wouldn't feel confident taking Nintendo to court about

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it, but I'm not sure I would chalk it up to pure carelessness either. The most

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likely scenario in our opinion is that

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this is an example of tactical laziness.

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What a beautiful term. Because the

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benefit of this inification is so obvious, money. You need a second dock

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in your house. Well, instead of using something you already have, that'll be

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$120 more directly to Nintendo. Thank you very much. You want to go traveling

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and have something more portable. Time to order another expensive Nintendo

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approved accessory. It makes me wonder if we would be better if they just use

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proprietary port. On the one hand, it would solve the seeming underhandedness

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of the issue and the ensuing consumer confusion. Everyone would have known

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from the get-go about the incompatibility, and maybe Nintendo

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could have justified it with a neat unique feature like a walking port, all

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while leaving the top USB port uh as is

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for charging. But that would mean needing to develop and manufacture a

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proprietary port, possibly upping the price over a mass-produced generic part

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with Nintendo fronting the R&D cost. And

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proprietary ports means that it's Nintendo's own IP, so they can set the

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license fee. probably upping the cost on third party accessories. It would also

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mean increased e-waste longterm when there's more Switch 2 docs left than

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Switch to players. That's really not ideal. On the other hand, it's

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exceptionally frustrating to be able to correctly plug in your accessories and

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then not have them work. To be fair, that's not a Nintendo exclusive problem.

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All type-C ports and cables have not been created equal. It's an ongoing

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issue. But in my personal experience, the compatibility issues are generally

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trending towards becoming solved, not launching themselves towards totally

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unnecessary compatibility catastrophe, which just makes this so infuriating,

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especially since the Switch 2 is less capable than most modern regular TypeC

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devices. The charging caps out at around 15 watts, which may be good for battery

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health long term, but it certainly would be nice to have the option to fast

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charge when necessary. and variable refresh rate is currently not possible

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via the dock. You can only do that in handheld mode. So, we're really not

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asking much of these. Even Apple manages to be more universal than this crap.

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Apple was one of the pioneers of the industry move towards mass adoption of

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USB type-C and Thunderbolt. I remember they actually took a lot of flak for

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being the first to ship a laptop, the 2015 MacBook, with only USB type-C,

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which is especially funny when you consider how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming on the phone side.

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But I digress. The point is, in spite of Apple's long proud history of making

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things proprietary for no obvious user benefit, even they haven't gone as far

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as creating a proprietary handshake between their cables, their accessories,

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and their computers. Although, don't imagine for a second they're not capable

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of it. Oh god, I hope they're not getting any ideas from this cuz once

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Apple does something, well, the industry follows. Hopefully Nintendo doesn't have

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quite the same influence. While we've harped pretty hard on Nintendo so far,

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we want to give credit where credit is due. >> Do we? They're helping to push the micro

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SD Express standard into the mainstream instead of making some expensive

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proprietary format like the Xbox Series or the PlayStation VA.

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>> Okay, that's fair. But not even everything they've done with their

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non-proprietary storage is good. The fact that they don't let you just dump

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save game files off of your system onto it is quite frankly offensive to me.

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Nintendo has angered all of us with their game prices. But here's the thing,

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the most that that can cost me is about $80. That's the worst case scenario. But

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imagine this. I dump 300 hours into a

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game and then I don't subscribe to Nintendo Online, so I can't back up my

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save. and then I happen to lose my Switch, a portable device, I lose 300

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hours. I mean, okay, obviously I'm not being paid to game, so it's not a

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straightforward mathematical equation. But if we're talking about what it would

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cost me in my time and my personal energy to go back and get all of that

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back, honestly, I'd rather go to work for one day so I can buy a newing game

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versus dump another 300 hours in to get back what I lost.

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>> So, what can we do? Well, the best thing to do is not give Nintendo your money.

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either wait for the next gen Yuzu or just skip Nintendo games until they fix

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this. That's probably the best, most impactful move you can make. But when

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you look at the Switch one and two sales number, it's pretty easy to feel like

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your wallet's vote doesn't get you very far anymore. And I don't feel any kind

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of moral superiority for telling you to stop engaging with Nintendo's games.

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They are clearly making fantastic experiences that no one else can match.

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and I and lots of you want to play them.

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You could buy third-p partyy options like the Antank S3 that we're going to

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have linked down in the video description that somehow has the ability

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to speak the Switch 2's proverbial language.

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Who the knows how Antank figured that out? A friend at Nintendo or on the

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third shift at one of the factories? Random dumb luck. Regardless, it works

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for now. Nintendo could technically alter that deal on a whim by changing

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their protocols in a neat little game of cyber cat and mouse. But what we'd all

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really like is for this video to be out of date as soon as it hits the internet.

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It seems like Nintendo has it within their power to push a couple of firmware

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updates to stop this baloney. Baloney like this Segway sandwich to our sponsor

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par for the course. It totally makes sense that Vessie was founded in

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Vancouver with the mission of providing fashionforward footwear using their

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off your first purchase by going to vestie.com/LTT

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or scanning the QR code on the screen, huh? Or clicking the link in the

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description box. If you like videos showcasing the baloney big tech is

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trying to pull over on you, you should watch our most recent tech gripes. So

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00:15:40,079 --> 00:15:48,079
many damn gripes, man. I sit a lot

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cooler in this one. Good job, me.