Cracks Appearing in Some DS Lites

Word is spreading of a possible design flaw.
By Li C. Kuo | July 18, 2006

A number of forum posters and websites across the Internet are beginning to report stories of the hinges of DS Lite handhelds cracking. According to some unhappy DS Lite owners, a small crack is appearing on the hinge above the shoulder buttons of their systems. A handful of online posters have also posted pictures of these cracks. Apparently, these cracks tend to be small, and do not affect the playability or performance of the DS Lite. It seems that this is mostly a cosmetic issue, although a couple of posters have claimed that the crack has resulted in some "looseness" when opening and closing the device.

There are a number of theories as to what's causing the crack, but nothing concrete has developed yet. Some gamers are attributing the crack to a design flaw in the mechanism that holds the DS Lite open. We sent a query about this to Nintendo, but haven't heard a reply yet. DS Lite owners are reporting that Nintendo is charging $40 to $50 to repair the crack. While the number of blogs and forum posters may make this seem like a widespread problem, remember that 600,000 DS Lites were sold in the US in June alone. We checked all the DS Lites in the GameSpy offices and are happy to report that no cracks were found on any of them.

SOURCE: www.Gamespy.com