I could probably build an entire second career just making videos about Nintendo's bad behavior,
but the one we're gonna look at today is one that's gonna hit the wallet of merely every
Switch 2 owner. The completely unnecessary left turn into proprietary bill that they have taken
with the Switch 2. While the rest of the game console industry has made serious strides toward
universal standards and interoperability, this dock is a classic example of locking down a product
not for a good reason, but just because we can, or to make a buck, or because, I don't know,
you. And the bigger problem here is that Nintendo is a market leader, and their actions may very
well embolden other tech companies to do the same. Check this out. This dock here works perfectly
on the Switch 1, and in fact, every other device on the table. And the Switch 2? No, no, no. That's the
only device we were able to find that it won't work with. All of these docks and dongles you're
looking at now will work with the Switch 1 or with your laptop, but you can't use them on your Switch 2.
It would seem then that Nintendo has opted to make their new universal serial bus device
a little less universal. The question is how? I mean, it's still got a regular Type-C connector,
so what's happening? To find out, we have the Infineon Protocol Analyzer, a little device that
intercepts the communication between two USB-C PD devices, and allows us to see exactly what
Nintendo has done. Oh, here we go. Normal, normal, normal. Vendor-defined message.
But what the heck is a vendor-defined message? And what is this message from our sponsor?
Let's take a step back and explain the wonders of USB in the modern age,
which is going to give us some additional context as to why we should be especially mad at Nintendo.
Since its inception in 1996, USB has been a consistent standard that's replaced
many connectors with one easy to insert connector. There's been tons of revisions with increases in
power and data delivery as well as more and more functionality with each update,
all while maintaining a pretty robust backwards and forwards compatibility.
It's honestly a pretty impressive collaboration in an industry of min-maxing profiteers.
Arguably its biggest change came with the introduction of the USB-C standard, which was
partially intended to make all USB devices just a little more universal, although there's definitely
been some snags in the decade plus since the update. In an effort to reduce the amount of
USB-C devices that may fry each other because of voltage and compatibilities, the USB-C PD,
or power delivery standard, was released. As many of you will know, that's a protocol for
negotiation between two devices to communicate their power and data capabilities. Lucas from
the Labs just wrote a really fantastic article about this handshake, and if you want a little
more detail, you should definitely give that a read. For now, let's test what's actually
happening with the Switch 2. To understand what we're working with, let's test out the Switch 2
in the Switch 2 dock first. And we have image. Wow, these two devices meant to work together,
work together. Fantastic. Let's take a look at what all these messages mean. This interface
can be a little bit overwhelming if you don't know exactly what you're looking for.
The main thing to know is the message column is the messages that are being sent in between the
two docks. In the power role, we have SNK, which is our sync device, and SRC, which is our source
device. In this case, our source is our dock, and our sync is the switch. So the first thing we're
seeing is the source offering up its capabilities. When you look in this pane over here, you can see
that it's offering five, nine, and 15 volt power. Good CRC, which you'll see all the way down,
just means Roger. Then our Switch is talking SNK, and it's looking for object position three,
which is the 15 volts of power. We get a Roger. We get an accept from our dock. We get another
Roger. Next, we have power supply ready, meaning it's ready to deliver its power. We got our Roger.
Then we have a data role swap. So now the switch is switching roles, and it's kind of taking control
of the interaction. Then we get our Vekon swap, and to oversimplify, it's just another part of
kind of the data role swap. We got good. We got good power supply ready. And then we have a little
soft reset where you can see this SOP prime. That's actually when the USB devices are talking to
the intermediary devices. So it might be talking to a cable that's in between, if it's an active cable,
or a part of the dock or something. So right now it's doing a little soft reset for those.
Then we have our vendor-defined messages, and you can see in this pane, it's asking for
discover identity. And this is the first time that our dock and our Switch are going to communicate,
hey, you Nintendo, are you Nintendo device? Vendor-defined doesn't mean that it's like
an exclusive lockdown thing necessarily, but it can. And then in quick, basically we have
these vendor-defined messages where the dock and the Switch are going to try and negotiate
their DisplayPort mode. It takes clearly a lot of vendor-defined messages, and this is sort of
where the things become a little unusual. In this case, it's going to work, and we get a display on
our screen after they've negotiated their modes. But let's take a look at what happens when we
connect the Switch to a dock that won't work. Now we're going to test out this pretty generic
Nucleum USB Type-C dongle. You can immediately see things are a little bit different. Our dongle
gives it source capabilities, the Switch requests based on that. We get our power supply ready,
Vcon swap, and then the 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 different order, which ends up in a reject from the Switch.
They try this a couple of times. Eventually it works. Power supply, we do our little
intermediary soft reset, and then we do it all again. And that's a little bit strange. Why are
we doing it all again? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting to our intermediary reset,
and then we're into our vendor-defined stuff. We're trying to find who's talking to who
in specific. Are these Nintendo products? And then we're discovering the modes.
And this is generally the DisplayPort modes in this. The Switch is asking for a specific mode.
We get connected. We get UFD connected. And then it kind of just like fizzles out. And then it
sort of stops communicating. And that's going to be kind of a reoccurring pattern where
things don't happen in the same order. Things get confused. And then the communication kind of
just ceases. Let me show you on a monitor. This one's even more clear why things aren't working.
They're trying to do the data roll swap, and there's a rejection happening from
the Switch. These two buddies not working together so good. But we're still seeing our pattern that
the Switch has a little bit of a difficulty negotiating when things don't go exactly as it's
expecting. That means only hardware with the exact validated negotiation can decode these messages
and successfully negotiate a display out from the Switch too. And this isn't a technical limitation
of USB-C itself. Most PD devices can navigate these operations in different orders and make it work.
Rather, I think the most likely answer here and the one that avoids making claims we can't
absolutely confirm is that Nintendo made sure that it worked on their own devices and then
stopped their efforts there. That means that even if a third-party dock has the correct power
delivery and video output capabilities, it just won't fully function with the Switch too unless
it can successfully communicate using Nintendo-specific undisclosed protocols. This communications
lockdown definitely could be malicious, but I wouldn't feel confident taking Nintendo to court
about it. But I'm not sure I would chalk it up to pure carelessness either. The most likely
scenario, in our opinion, is that this is an example of tactical laziness. What a beautiful term.
Because the benefit of this enshrification is so obvious. Money. Do you need a second dock in your
house? Well, instead of using something you already have, that'll be $120 more directly to Nintendo.
Thank you very much. You want to go traveling and have something more portable. Time to order
another expensive Nintendo-approved accessory. It makes me wonder if we would be better if they
just use proprietary port. On the one hand, it would solve the seeming underhandedness of the
issue and the ensuing consumer confusion. Everyone would have known from the get-go about the
incompatibility and maybe Nintendo could have justified it with a unique feature like a
locking port all while leaving the top USB port as is for charging. But that would mean
needing to develop and manufacture a proprietary port, possibly upping the price over a mass-produced
generic part with Nintendo fronting the R&D cost. And proprietary ports means that it's Nintendo's
own IP so they can set the license fee, probably upping the cost on third-party accessories.
It would also mean increased e-waste long-term when there's more Switch 2 docks left than
Switch 2 players. That's really not ideal. On the other hand, it's exceptionally
frustrating to be able to correctly plug in your accessories and then not have them work.
To be fair, that's not a Nintendo exclusive problem. All type C ports and cables have not
been created equal. It's an ongoing issue, but in my personal experience, the compatibility issues
are generally trending towards becoming solved, not launching themselves towards totally unnecessary
compatibility catastrophe, which just makes this so infuriating. Especially since the Switch 2 is
less capable than most modern, regular type C devices. The charging caps out at around 15
watts, which may be good for battery health long-term, but it certainly would be nice to have the
option to fast charge when necessary and variable refresh rate is currently not possible via the
dock. You can only do that in handheld mode, so we're really not asking much of these.
Even Apple manages to be more universal than this crap. Apple was one of the pioneers of
the industry move towards mass adoption of USB type C and Thunderbolt. I remember they actually
took a lot of flack for being the first to ship a laptop, the 2015 MacBook, with only USB type C,
which is especially funny when you consider how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming
on the phone side. But I digress. The point is, in spite of Apple's long proud history of making
things proprietary for no obvious user benefit, even they haven't gone as far as creating a
proprietary handshake between their cables, their accessories, and their computers. Although
don't imagine for a second they're not capable of it. Oh god, I hope they're not getting any ideas
from this. Because once Apple does something, well, the industry follows. Hopefully Nintendo
doesn't have quite the same influence. While we've harped pretty hard on Nintendo so far,
we want to give credit where credit is due. Do we? They are helping to push the MicroSDX
standard into the mainstream instead of making some expensive proprietary format like the Xbox
Series or the PlayStation Beta. Okay, that's fair. But not even everything they've done with their
non-proprietary storage is good. The fact that they don't let you just dump save game files off
of your system onto it is quite frankly offensive to me. Nintendo has angered all of us with their
game prices. But here's the thing, the most that that can cost me is about 80 US dollars.
That's the worst case scenario. But imagine this, I dump 300 hours into a game and then
I don't subscribe to Nintendo online so I can't back up my save and then I happen to lose my
switch, a portable device. I lose 300 hours. I mean, okay, obviously I'm not being paid to game so
it's not a straightforward mathematical equation. But if we're talking about what it would cost me
in my time and my personal energy to go back and get all of that back, honestly, I'd rather go to
work for one day so I can buy a new fucking game versus dump another 300 hours in to get back what
I lost. So what can we do? Well, the best thing to do is not give Nintendo your money. Either wait
for the next Gen Yuzu or just skip Nintendo games until they fix this. That's probably the best,
most impactful move you can make. But when you look at the switch one and two sales number,
it's pretty easy to feel like your wallet's vote doesn't get you very far anymore. And I don't
feel any kind of moral superiority for telling you to stop engaging with Nintendo's games. They are
clearly making fantastic experiences that no one else can match. And I and lots of you want to play
them. You could buy third party options like the Antank S3 that we're going to have linked down in
the video description that somehow has the ability to speak the switch to his proverbial language.
Who the fuck knows how Antank figured that out? A friend at Nintendo or on the third shift at one
of the factories? Random dumb luck. Regardless, it works for now. Nintendo could technically alter
that deal on a whim by changing their protocols in a neat little game of cyber cat and mouse. But
what we'd all really like is for this video to be out of date as soon as it hits the internet.
It seems like Nintendo has it within their power to push a couple of firmware updates
to stop this baloney. Baloney. Like this Segway sandwich. To a sponsor. If you like video showcasing
the baloney big tech is trying to pull over on you, you should watch our most recent tech gripes.
So many damn gripes. Man, I said a lot cooler in this one. Good job me.