Could the Wii’s Dirty Lens be a Filthy Lie?
by John Kershaw on March 10, 2008 at 12:52 am
Shortly after the launch of Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii, reports began to surface that a small, yet noticeable number of people were getting disc-read errors and were unable to play one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Last month in Japan, Nintendo said that this was caused by a dirty lens inside the console, but could there be more to it?
Nintendo’s official statement claimed that because Brawl uses a double-layer disc, bits of dirt on the Wii’s lens prevent the disc from being read properly; on a single layer disc the dirt is in a small enough quantity not to cause trouble. Nintendo said that if you get this error, they will fix it for you free of charge and pay for you to ship it to them.
This all seemed rather plausible and everybody was happy. Until it was pointed out there are a few, rather large flaws in Nintendo’s statement. Firstly, why do you need to have your Wii sent of to Nintendo, just to have the lens cleaned? If it’s just a simple bit of dirt, wouldn’t a CD lens cleaner do just as good a job?
Secondly, won’t the discs just get dirty again? Simply cleaning it once isn’t going to stop the same thing from happening again. The only way to get a better result is to change something else inside the console. If this is the case, won’t it have to be done to all Wiis?
Finally, and this is the real blow, some people have reported getting this error with brand new Wii consoles and using brand new discs. If this is a dirt issue, is it really likely that a brand new Wii is dirty enough to not work correctly?
So, this leaves the question: could Nintendo be lying and actually trying to cover up some kind of hardware issue? Or is there genuinely an innocent reason for this slightly implausible excuse? Either way, at this moment in time all reports seem to indicate the issues are with a very small portion of consoles, so don’t let that distract you from your final smashes just yet.
Source: Destructoid
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on March 10, 2008 2:04 pm
Hey, nice thinking that this could be a Wii problem rather than a dirt problem.. Yes, it is true that Nintendo, or rather any other company, let it be Microsoft or Sony, will not ask the user to send back the machine just for cleaning the drive..
I am sure Nintendo should have a local vendor who should be able to support small and simple issues like this at least for a one year warranty time rather than asking the user to send the machine to Nintendo itself..? Sounds very strange though…
on March 11, 2008 4:03 pm
While I haven’t picked up a copy of Brawl yet, I had disc read errors the very first night I had my Wii. Even the standard copy of Wii Sports, I had to pull the disc out twice and blow into the slot. I kinda look at it as a throwback to the old nintendo ways of getting a game to start.
on June 6, 2008 11:58 pm
good analyzation!
yes same thing happened to me the verry first time I played wii sport i had a disk error.. but after 3 days when i played it. It just run again without any problem… your analyzation is somehow true. they may have some hardware issues with it.
enjoy wiiiiii!!