California, the biggest state in the US when it comes to both population and the sheer volume of tech companies squeezed into its borders, has just passed the country’s most extreme right to repair bill in the US (via Ars Technica). It’s the third state to pass such a bill, but goes further than either Minnesota or New York in that it forces companies to support their products for longer. But while it will cover gaming PCs and laptops, games console manufacturers get a free pass.
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There are exceptions, however, and it seems like games consoles are somehow exempt from this right to repair requirement. Guess someone’s been lobbying against the inclusion of consoles, eh? The bill itself talks specifically about an “electronic or appliance product” or just a “product”, but stipulates that doesn’t include a video game console.
“‘Video game console’ means a computing device, including its components and peripherals, that is primarily used by consumers for playing video games, such as a console machine, a handheld console device, or another device or system. ‘Video game console’ does not include a general or an all-purpose computer, which includes, but is not limited to, a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or cell phone.”
So, that means your Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch consoles are all seemingly exempt from having to offer long term support, but at least in the computing space your PC and laptop will be covered.
Did Apple figure out a way to classify iPhones and Macs as game consoles then?
they did show the iPhone 15 playing resident evil village
Unless it switches to primarily being used for playing games that is a no.
That said that presentation (and some othe previous stuff)… make some suspect that an apple console that is only digital and pulls from their store isn’t that far fetched nowadays. Or s new apple tv more gaming oriented I guess.
Apple Pippin II
Breakout. And… Super Breakout.
Wait holy shit. I was in a thread talking about the 15 and it was mentioned that Apple seems to be heading this way with the hardware they’ve been adding. This would explain why they didn’t fight this bill
Why yes! My product the Google iPixel ZFold 15 is a gaming console! You would think it’s a phone because of the calling and phone-like features however it is exempt from right-to-repair because it plays Genshin with more fraps than any other gizmo and doohicky in anyone’s pocket in this hemisphere!
And you would be remiss to assume my Grapple ThinkPad 2025 is a mere laptop! Nay! A gaming console it is! It can’t even run the Chrome Dinosaur for 35 seconds without running out of RAM and is really built for content creation and the school setting in mind, but it is absolutely built for gaming and also omitted from right-to-repair!!
So if you can play doom on it then it’s a gaming console. Everything is a gaming console now.
You jest, however Asus makes ROG gaming phones.
It should be the primary use so no.
Console vendors, particularly Nintendo absolutely hate it when someone tries to thinker with their products. There was a Darknet Diaries podcast from August 1 named ‘Team Xecuter’ that gives some insight into this. Funnily enough, not every country is encouraging this behavior from Nintendo like the U.S. is. France is pretty lenient on console modders, for example.
Umm… important context: Team Xecuters work was based on enabling piracy on the device. It had fuck all to do with repairs or non-security-compromising mods
Nintendo of America must have paid $$$ to the politicians
Because fuck you peasants… What you are gonna about it, bitches?
Hopefully at the very least they’ll call their state representatives and tell them about the bullshitness of this exclusion.
Japan would rather die. Microsoft, I don’t know what their shit deal is.
I think they are somewhat ok with it? They did just start selling controller parts for self repair. Not sure if they will ever sell parts for the series consoles but who knows.
What about steam deck ? Is it a video game system or a handled pc ?
Doesn’t really matter, Valve are happy for you to do what you like with it already.
How about if Microsoft made a similar product?
My guess is it would be considered a general purpose computer, assuming it runs standard Win/Linux and can run any software even if it’s specs and shape are geared towards games.
Not a lawyer though, just guessing
I don’t get the context of this question at all? Like, would it come under console definition, or just what would I think in general?
You said it doesn’t matter if it’s a video game system or a handheld pc because Valve doesn’t care what you do with it. Another company might care what you do with their similar device, so perhaps it would matter to you then.
And the point is that we should consider whether details of a legal decision matter regardless of the specific companies involved.
Someone specifically asked what it would count as and I pointed out that valve are already repair friendly. I was only talking in the context of that specific machine.
Assuming there’s no general computing/desktop mode, I’d expect it to be qualified as a console.
PC. It’s running PC hardware and PC software.
So how many of you are planning on contacting your state representative to tell them this exclusion in the new law is bullshit?
i’ve always just used my PC, so I’m fine :)
This is obviously the result of lobbying but… I don’t disagree on the end result.
When my PC has a failure, I know what to test. I can replace the psu, the memory, even the gpu or cpu or mobo in a pinch. Maybe I can replace a cap on the motherboard but, at that point, I generally write off the board because I can’t trace all the vias and the like. But if a cap on my GPU fails? I am doing an RMA or crying. Because the situations where even the dedicated repair shops (let alone consumers) have the resources to determine if there are any other failures are incredibly rare. If it is out of warranty I might give it a go but it feels like a ticking time bomb.
I would hope for finer grain logic on this. Be able to replace the disc drive (even though we won’t have those next gen… and maybe not even for the refresh SKUs) and… that is really it? Oh, probably ports too. But, increasingly, consoles are just bigass SOCs.
Same with phones, really. You can, and should, be able to replace the screen. Maybe a few ports since those tend to still be soldered on to connectors. But good luck doing meaningful repair to the actual computer-y parts.
I think this is still an incredibly good bill and am all for it. But I am also reminded of people who are angry that they could repair their vacuums back in the 70s. And then they MIGHT acknowledge that the small handheld vacuum I keep in my garage has like five times the suction and is so small I regularly lose it when I need to detail my car.
It being harder to repair means it shouldn’t be repairable? That’s an… interesting stance to take. Right to Repair is all about giving people the information and resources necessary to make a repair, especially if it’s not designed to be repaired.
How are you going to repair something where a 12 nanometer circuit burned out? This is the kind of stuff that often needs outright destructive analysis to diagnose after the fact.
For technology like that, “repair” is “replace”.
And take a look at the ifixit teardown of the PS5.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PlayStation+5+Teardown/138280
You have some plastic, some heat pipes, a fan, and then a single board with a few chips on there. MAYBE you can replace a couple modules and ports but, by and large, you are looking at ICs. Many of which specifically connect to different channels (sorry, it has been ages since I did any PCB work so I forget the term for the “wires”).
To make that repairable would require significant redesigns, likely increase cost considerably, and, ironically, make it more prone to failure because now you need proper ports/sockets and the like. Like, we all, rightfully, point out how god damned huge the PS5 is. Even ignoring the performance implications of migrating away from an SOC design, having more discrete and replaceable parts is just going to make it bigger.
And… look at NZXT’s cock-up a few years back where undiagnosed failures in the PCB made for a fire hazard. Gamers Nexus has some awesome videos about that.
Resources would be a lot better spent with a focus on electronics recycling. I think most best buys have an e-waste bin at this point but… I sincerely doubt the average pimply faced teenager isn’t just chucking that in the dumpster. A lot of county dumps/recycling centers will provide this but will also add stupid constraints like “each household is allowed N visits per year” that further discourage people from not chucking it in the trash or recycling bin.
The bill is not asking for things to be redesigned to be more repairable. It is more focused on being able to get the spare parts, chips, tools and docs that make more repairs of the devices to be viable. Many places can already do component level repairs of boards. It might not be worth it if the SOC dies, but a board has many other components on it that are far more likely to fail and much easier to replace than the SOC. If a power regulator fails why should you have to buy whole new board? Or if a few resisters/caps get burned out/shorted they can be replaced without needing a whole new device.
No not everyone can do these repairs - but why should those that can be blocked from doing so? Why should companies be able to deny chip manufacturers from selling a 12c chip that can fix a several hundred dollar board? Why should chips be serialised so that you cannot swap them out with working chips from donor boards? Why cannot tools be made available to calibrate sensors after they have been replaced? Why should any company be able to stop you getting the parts and tools needed to fix the stuff you own? Or be able to go to someone else to fix it?
Not every device will be fixable - but why stop any device from being fixable just because a few cannot be?
Because, as time goes on, more and more devices fundamentally are not repairable. We all know someone who (… ten or twenty years ago. Jesus Christ) bought the equivalent of an ifixit kit and did cell phone repair on a dining room table. And… most of them knew almost nothing and had horrible ethics.
A phone with a battery that discharges too rapidly or a broken audio jack? Not good, but likely not a huge issue. Something that is powered on for 18 hours a day with a big chonky power supply? We are looking at fire hazards. And a short that would take out an audio jack is a short that will take out the GPU and render the entire SOC as scrap anyway. Its similar logic to why you don’t fix a power supply. Yes, you might be able to see a part that needs to be replaced. But the stuff on the other side of the power supply is worth a lot more than a new PSU from corsair.
Providing tools to open things up more easily: I am fine with that but I also don’t really think it is necessary considering that those tools do exist and the professionals have them. And the rest of us buy them from ifixit. I’ll reference them a few times, but I fucking hate that Apple have their own special tools that they expect people to rent from them that do what everyone else has been doing for decades.
Serialized parts? I dislike that on principle. But I also remember how many people burned out their Nintendo Switch because they didn’t realize that the official dock more or less pissed on the USB C standard and that the charger needed to handle that for you. And when the lifespan of a video game console is generally 6-8 years+ and has gone through multiple revisions and different part sets? I am not at all convinced that the effort to indicate specifically which wifi module IC can be bought as a replacement on which specific model. Especially since people will likely buy those from AliExpress (awesome website, by the way) and have no idea how to test if that is actually what they bought.
Also, just to to a tangent on the Switch debacle: Unless you are Nintendo, the end result of that is “fucking gameboy is a piece of shit and a safety hazard” and everyone hates you. Instead… it was that third party docks are horrible and everything needs a Nintendo Seal of Approval. And the people making third party docks have a massive uphill battle to even get people to consider buying their products.
Anyway, all of that assumes that whatever burned out the wifi module ONLY burned out the wifi module and there are no underlying damages that can cause future damage or become a fire hazard.
Which gets to the idea of selling replacement SOCs. Which… is what apple has increasingly begun to do. And that is not a solution in the slightest and is mostly a way to nickle and dime people when they don’t apply the heat spreader correctly or whatever else.
In a perfect world? This legislature would actually be based on knowledge and feasibility. That isn’t how the legal system works. So… yeah.
So focus on the fixable devices. But don’t try to shoehorn in lip service responses that mostly serve to undermine the bill itself. Because the end result would not be that Sony and MS and Nintendo provide detailed schematics and only well intentioned techs with x-ray machines do maintenance. The result would be that Hoover solders a few capacitors in place and argues that they are also an SOC and can only ship people new vacuums. And if you want to replace the entirety of your Hoover vacuum’s internals? You better rent the special Hoover tools so that the end price is like 10 dollars less than just buying a new one.
As an example. A few months back, the PSU in my computer literally exploded. Shot sparks and everything. In hindsight, I should have wondered why things were shutting off randomly but I just assumed windows sucked and was lazy.
Since it had very visibly discharged, I opened it up a few days later. Note: NEVER OPEN A POWER SUPPLY. I found the part that had failed and it was a pretty nice boom. But I also found a few smudges of black on the circuit board and a few of the solder points for other components. Most likely that was just soot from the burning parts but I have no way of truly knowing that without more or less x-raying the board. Maybe I could do some tests where I run a signal through some of the wires and circuits but that is sketchy even if I knew what “normal” was.
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No one is going to read your unsourced scree.
That’s not necessarily the point.
The point may be to make everyone else stop reading the topic / conversation and move on to read something else, to “pollute the waters”.
To shape and steer the narrative away from being able to repair devices freely, to sow doubt that devices can and should be repaired by regular people. To plant the seed of doubt, and then prevent others from removing that seed.
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Ever seen the inside of a SteamDeck? If the device is designed in a modular way you replace one small circuit board instead of the whole thing.
Yeah. the steam deck has different boards for the sticks, the face buttons, etc. But the actual “computer” part is still a single board (I also want to say the steam deck uses a SOC/APU but can’t be bothered to verify).
In the case of the PS5: They could pull the I/O onto a separate board (and I think that also already is? too lazy to verify) but… not much else. Different boards for each individual IC like the wifi module or whatever is just wasteful.
Why can’t spare parts and schematics be available to a third-party repair center that has experience, so that we can take it to them … so they can fix it?
Again, how are you going to repair something where a 12 nanometer chip burned out?
A human hair is 18000 to 80000 nanometers. And 12 nm is “older” as far as processes go.
So even if that third party repair center had an x-ray machine and a REALLY powerful microscope and could diagnose if there was damage? They aren’t able to actually repair it.
Which means they are replacing chips. Which, in the case of an SOC, is the entire chip (the black/grey box(es)). So… maybe you can save the PCB (the green part) but that costs next to nothing and… do you really want to hope that a 600-1000 dollar chip was properly installed so that you can save 10-20 bucks on the board?
Which gets back to “okay, replace the entire board” which is increasingly “okay, replace the entire device except the plastic shell”.
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I feel like they’re being disingenuous. Lots of what-aboutisms and moving goal posts and ignoring the issues that got us to needing right to repair laws in the first place, namely Apple and John Deere and all the copy cats, but also with the goal of reducing e-waste.
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I feel like they’re being disingenuous. Lots of what-aboutisms and moving goal posts and ignoring the issues that got us to needing right to repair laws in the first place
That’s exactly what “they” (aka ChatGPT/shill) are doing.
Again, how are you going to repair something where a 12 nanometer chip burned out? A human hair is 18000 to 80000 nanometers. And 12 nm is “older” as far as processes go. So even if that third party repair center had an x-ray machine and a REALLY powerful microscope and could diagnose if there was damage? They aren’t able to actually repair it.
That’s one hell of a straw man you have going there. Most people would just unsolder the chip from the circuit board and replace it with another one, or just replace the whole circuit board at once.
You’re not being intellectually honest in trying to argue the other side of this topic.
Seriously, go watch YouTube videos on the subject.
The whole Steam Deck is $400 so its chip is not that expensive
Watch YouTube videos showing component level repairs of gaming devices.
This is silly thinking. Just because you can’t be bothered doesn’t mean someone else can’t and do a good job. You should probably YouTube component level repairs before wildly stating that 3rd party techs can’t do it. They already do it but it’s a bit of a learning process for each device due to the lack of documentation etc. Provide docs and access to parts and it’s then alot easier for the people who already can do these types of repairs and then we can all create less ewaste.
You should probably YouTube component level repairs before wildly stating that 3rd party techs can’t do it.
The irony is that yesterday YouTube suggested these kinds of videos to me in a big banner at the top of their main page.
I didn’t even know this kind of repair existed until I watched a bunch of the videos as I went down the rabbit hole, some of the repairs were very cool to watch.
So… You think reoairabikity makes sense for PCs because they’re pretty repairable. But repairabikity doesn’t make sense for consoles because gee, they aren’t very repairable.
The reason even repair shops can’t do much for consoles is because THEY ARE NOT MADE TO BE REPAIRABLE! Legislation would change that!
Wow! I can’t understand how you can miss the basic point here so badly.
Right to repairability is not just YOUR right to repairability ya dingus, its also the right of people far more knowledgable than you to repair other people’s consoles as a job. Right to Repair allows people other than the company to open up their repair shops.
This reads like corporate ChatGPT.
I just fixed the fan on my steam deck, it was pretty simple. Not every failure is a problem on the motherboard
