Not to be left behind, and subject to legal issues, Nintendo has followed the lead of Sony and adjusted their warranty policies to comply with FTC guidelines. These guidelines ruled that certain warranty practices for companies like Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, HTC and more violated protections against predatory practices. Namely, those guidelines were applied to those pesky warranty stickers on game consoles and other devices.
The FTC took issue with the “warranty void if removed” policy which all these companies had for years. This violates the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, and the FTC gave all companies 30 days to revise their policies or face legal action.
Sony adjusted their policy earlier in May, revising the core concept away from preventing people from DIY repairs, and instead towards guarding against unlicensed repairs and modding of their products. The language in the revised policy from Nintendo is extremely similar to the one from Sony, check it out.
“This warranty shall not apply if this product: (a) is used with products not sold or licensed by Nintendo (Including but not limited to, non-licensed game enhancement and copier devices, adapters, software, and power supplies,” the original policy read.
Now, the updated terms read, “This warranty shall not apply if this product has been damaged by products not sold or licensed by Nintendo (Including, but not limited to, adapters, software, and power supplies).”
Now we just have to wait for Microsoft and a few other companies to catch up. I’d expect that their revisions to product warranties will take a very similar form to the ones we’ve already covered.
