The good news is that I’ve heard nothing but good things about Nintendo’s replacement policies.
The bad news is I lost my fucking saved data.
When I first got the Nintendo Switch, I had absolutely no problems for a good while. Then, as I played more and more hours on Breath of the Wild, I started getting the 2168-0002 error.
This error has been reported with many different variations in how it occurs abs various different solutions, but one thing a parties agree on is that it fucking sucks.
For me, it happened when I tried to turn on the Switch or bring it out of sleep mode. At first, I had to hold the power off button for 12 seconds to turn it back off and I would have to try several times to get it to work eight again. It seemed to get harder and harder each time to get it to open up right (although this could be my imagination).
Calling customer support, I was told it would go away if I updated. I didn’t have internet at the time, so I waited until I did get it and updated the system.
This didn’t fix it, it seemed to make it worse. One definitive change is that I no longer had to hold the power off button for 12 seconds.
But it still took me 30 minutes to get the Switch to start right.
I tried the “soft reset”, holding power, volume up and down to bring an option to reset without erasing game data, but I wasn’t able to bring this menu up.
Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and factory reset the whole thing.
It still didn’t work, so I can only conclude that I’m one of those unlucky folks who got a lemon.
But Nintendo, by all accounts, has been very good at replacing bad systems. I’ll be sending it in as soon as I get my mailbox key.
In the mean time, I’d like to have a moment of silence for my save data. I’d only beat one Spirit Beast so far, but damn. I still lost a lot of hours of screwing around and snapping pictures.
***UPDATE
As predicted, I did have to send it back in. I tried everything, even a total system reboot (which erased my save data.)
The customer support guy at Nintendo said they try to save the save data (Though I had already made that impossible) but they often aren’t able to when dealing with this type of crash.
There was almost zero hassle sending it in. And they did fix the crash, but then one of my joycons stopped working and I had to send it in again. (Luckily, I discovered this before I spent any more hours playing and building up save data.)
They apparently decided to send me a completely new Switch at that point.
The Southern Nerd 