You might have already read that my poor Wii has gone to the land of broken consoles. I get her shortly after launch and she left this life entirely too soon. Actually, you might call it a bit too late since my warranty was expired.
After deciding that, for me, 2009 would be the year of the Wii, I picked up all the cables and connectors necessary to setup the Wii in my office, where I spend most of my time. After about an hour of shuffling surge protectors, cabinets, and cables, I got everything hooked up and ready to rock. At that point, I brought the Wii up from downstairs and hooked her up. As soon as I booted it up, I could tell something just wasn’t right. On the Wii Menu, I was seeing flashing/flickering pixels all over the place in what seemed like a random pattern. So then I started my investigation.
I changed the component video input on my TV, changed the cables, the power supply, where the console was sitting, and where it was plugged in, but nothing seemed to even make a dent into my issue. I took the Wii back downstairs and the same thing happened on that HDTV as well, which pointed to the Wii. Thinking it might just be some sort of error going on with the Wii Menu, I fired up a couple Virtual Console games, some WiiWare games, and a few disc based games. The problem only seemed to get worse.
A little distraught, I did some online searching and my fears were confirmed: my GPU (that’s the graphics chip for those of you keeping track) had somehow overheated. Really not sure how that happens when the thing hardly gets used. The Wii wasn’t left in standby and I did not have WiiConnect24 enabled, so there was nothing running all the time. A call to Nintendo Customer Service was in order. I was a little afraid how things might go, especially after dealing with multiple broken Xbox 360’s and having friends go through the same process.
I went onto Nintendo’s website and got the phone number. Hold times were very short, especially for being so close to Christmas and New Year’s. I spoke with a gentleman that quickly confirmed that the GPU was on its way out and setup a repair for me. After giving him my serial number, he knew the day I had bought it and even the specific Best Buy location, which surprised me. The whole repair will cost $89.10, which includes tax and shipping. I spent a grand total of 14 minutes and 24 seconds on the phone from the point of the line ringing until I hung up. I was shocked at how easy the process was and how nice and knowledgeable the customer service rep was. Have to hand it to Nintendo here, they trounce the competition.
So later today I’m dropping off my Wii at my local FedEx to get shipped off to Nintendo’s repair center in Syracuse, NY. They say it can take 11-16 business days once I ship them the Wii, but the customer service rep assured me it would be a lot less given that I’m so close to their service center (it’s about a 2 hour drive).
Hopefully, in two weeks I’ll get to fire up my newly repaired Wii and join the revolution. I have a stack of new games and such here ready to play, so I’ll be happy when everything comes back. I’ll update when I get more information from Nintendo.
Have any of you had a Wii die? How was your experience getting it repaired?
I had that problem within the warranty period. Only thing that stinks is the data transfer. Some things aren’t even transferrable. Now, I recently noticed that my transferred Mii’s are no longer considered created by me. WTF?
@Odie – can you shed light on what isn’t transferrable? I’m praying SSBB game save can be transferred by Nintendo, since I can’t copy it to my SD card. If I lose all of that time and work (I have over 2/3 of the unlockables), I’m going to be pissed.
Not too upset about the Mii thing. I have my important Mii’s on my Wii Remote anyway.
Did your Wii Friend Code change?
Do you think they”ll figure out the problem and tell you? To assure that it was the system’s ‘own’ fault or yours. I mean it’s clear that you hardly used it and whatnot so it can’t be your fault and you had to pay 90 bucks.
Well, it’s out of warranty, so I had to pay. Whether they’ll tell me what’s wrong or not, I can’t say.
I wonder if it is best to leave WiiConnect24 on or not…I recently turned it back on because the console would get warm. Supposedly, the Wii uses a minuscule amount of energy in standby with Connect’ on. Sorry to say, my Wii is out of warranty also. Should the Wii be warm when this mode is on? Also, sometimes my disc drive is load, and other times it purrs like a kitten. Super Smash Bros versus Mario Party 8 is a good example, where the former is louder than my 360.
matt, dont worry the wii is garbage.
obviously the worst console, the motion control is a gimmick that dosent make up for the sub-par graphics….. id say if motion control is a big thing for you grab a ps3.
but cmon man…a wii?
Chad, the PS3 has many, MANY good points to it, however it’s motion controls are NOT one of them. There are maybe 2% of the PS3’s game library that use motion controls in any sense and about 0.0001% of games that fully incorporate motion controls.
The Nintendo Wii’s motion controls are spot – on, it’s just too bad it doesn’t have the software quality of the PS3 – then Nintendo would be sorted for life.
David I admit the ps3’s motion controls are far from bieng anything close to the wii’s.
that is the one and only wii selling point to me though. and it kind of seems a little gimmicky to me.
my dislike for the wii could however be because of my view on “casual gaming” and the industry moving toward it.
just beacause the sales are higher for basic,simple, casual games are higher doeas not make them the better game at all.
im rabling on now but my final point is thatin my moderate amount of time spent with the wii I have to view it as a very last gen console.
My Wii has recently gone on the fritz too (not dead yet though). Every now and then it incorrectly displays colours – greens and blues become the same fuzzy green-blue shade, and colours in general are very muted and dull. Can’t fix it, and it can last for over half an hour sometimes. It’s munted, cause my warranty is likely gone aswell (got it at launch).
I have had dreadful customer service with Nintendo since the first time out of a trilogy of mailing our Nintendo Wii into the HQ in Vancouver. The first time, a year ago, we had sent it in for repairs due to the entire Brawl issue which I’m sure some of you here have heard of, and recieved it around a month later – it had worked well up until the very end of the year when it decided to give up on us again. Frustrated but determined we had choen to return it once more to Nintendo in order to have them work their magic on it. We had recieved it after around 3 more weeks of waiting, and immediately after we recieved it we were DISTRAUGHT to find that it was malfunctioning once more for a THIRD time. So, what we have diceded to do is package up our Nintendo Wii equipment, take the over $180 in trade-ins we can earn, take the controllers, system and everything to our local game store, in exchange for Microsoft’s highly superior system, the Xbox 360.
I would highly suggest AGAINST sending your Wii in – you’ll end up with nothing but a broken Wii AGAIN.
Shame on Nintendo. xD