Don’t Buy Skins, Stickers For Your Nintendo Switch – Opt For Cases And Covers


If you’re excited to beautify your brand new Nintendo Switch, we recommend you hold out on the skins and stickers for now, as adhesives will damage the device.

Nintendo Switch just launched last March 3 and couple million gamers are already enjoying their brand new hybrid gaming devices as you read this.

Nintendo Switch launched last March 3. [Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]

The Nintendo Switch is as much a handheld device as the PlayStation Vita and the Nintendo 3DS in terms of its portability. And one of the nitpicks of handheld owners since the PlayStation Portable is the fun and thrill of picking out skins and decals for their devices.

Skins and stickers have been a standard for the PlayStation Vita and the Nintendo 3DS, and there are tons of choices and designs that will fit your different tastes and budget. In fact, most owners will opt to go to third-party skins and stickers providers since they have more designs to offer at a much cheaper price range.

This goes without saying that the Nintendo Switch, as a handheld, should be getting its fair share of skins and stickers as early as launch. In fact, many third-party providers of skins for the Nintendo Switch are already in business, such as dbrand, which offers custom colors and textures for the Nintendo Switch and Slick Wrap, which sells a variety of designed stickers and decals.

But no matter how beautiful these custom Nintendo Switch skins and sticker look, the thing is, you shouldn’t buy these stickers for now. Games Radar warns Nintendo Switch users to hold out on the third-party skins and stickers because reports are coming in that removal of the adhesives after an extended period of time will result in damage to the Nintendo Switch device.

dbrand, one of the most reputable providers of high-quality skins and stickers for electronic devices as laptops and consoles, went to Reddit this week to warn Nintendo Switch owners from buying skins and stickers for the mean time.

Apparently, after spending hours rigorously prototyping their skins and stickers on ten (yup, they bought 10 Switches just to test those bad boys) new Nintendo Switch devices, dbrand found that the outer coating of the device’s JoyCons and console will peel off along with their manufactured skins.

db_inc writes in detail their whole prototyping process with the Nintendo Switch.

“Simply put, the coating which exists on the JoyCons (and the console – more on that later) is either cured or designed in a way which doesn’t play well with adhesive.

“We received the Switch about 96 hours ago and immediately began prototyping. After a couple of prototypes, we saw minor indications of the outer coating beginning to peel off. Nintendo advised that the device we had in-hand was not the final build, although we assumed that pertained more to the software than the hardware.

“We decided to reserve judgement on whether the JoyCons could be skinned until we purchased a normal unit, like humans do, on release day from a physical retail location. If we found that a retail unit had similar peeling issues, a fact we can now confirm to be true, we would not release skins for the JoyCons.

“Unfortunately, our prototyping phase with the pre-release console had another (albeit different) issue with vinyl skin incompatibility. If you look at the back of the Switch, you’ll see that the Nintendo Switch logo and regulatory markings are all screen-printed in a light gray. This screen-printing (or pad-printing) process is also cured in a way which peels off with the adhesive on vinyl wraps.

“Again, we decided to reserve judgement on whether the Console would be skin-able until we purchased a retail unit to compare against the potentially non-final early unit which we were prototyping with.

“As you can guess, we purchased a retail unit (ten, in fact… just to make sure it wasn’t an isolated issue) and both the JoyCons and the Console are not compatible with vinyl wraps or any adhesive-backed skin of any kind.”

Long story short, if you buy a skin or a sticker for your Nintendo Switch, you’ll be damaging the device the moment you peel off the sticker. Damaging the Nintendo Switch this way is quite unfortunate since it will void your warranty.

If you’ve pre-ordered a Nintendo Switch from dbrand, they confirmed that they will be refunding your order in full. If you visit dbrand’s Nintendo Switch landing page, you’ll also be greeted with a friendly PSA that warns you about the incompatibility of the Nintendo Switch with standard electronic device adhesives.

Engadget has also called to attention that Nintendo is selling licensed Zelda Collector’s Edition Screen Protection and Skins via Toys R Us for $19.99, although it is out of stock at the moment. Reddit member Multimoon, speaking on behalf of the Nintendo Switch moderators, notes that the licensed Zelda skin made by PDP, however, will not damage the Nintendo Switch.

If you’re looking to customize your brand new Nintendo Switch, what you can look at for now are third-party cases and covers, as they will protect your handheld console hybrid, too.

At the top of Gotta Be Mobile’s list are the PDP Nintendo Switch Starter Kit, which doesn’t only come with a sleek carry case, but also gel protectors for your Nintendo Switch JoyCons; the Nintendo Switch Hybrid Cover, which offers screen protection and a variety of playing angles not native to the Nintendo Switch; and a variety of colorful PDP Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Gel Guards you can purchase from Amazon.

Or you can always enjoy the Nintendo Switch in its naked glory while we wait for more skins and stickers to get developed for this brand new gaming device.

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]

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