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>> No. 13907 Anonymous
15th April 2014
Tuesday 2:18 pm
13907 Incompetence
My Missus is a supervisor at CeX.

She comes home everyday from work and tells me a story about how incompetent other stores are. They have an internal system called E-commerce where a store can order items from another store. She is convinced her store is the only one that runs properly.

Everyday they get given wrong items. If I was a manager in one of these stores I would euthanise the staff and start again, that is a massive amount of buy in discrepancies.

Today she text me saying that they'd ordered a Wii U Pro Controller for a customer and the store that got the E-commerce pick sent them a Wii Classic Pro controller.

When technology is your bread and butter, you really shouldn't be making mistakes like that. They aren't even for the same console. I know there is a lad here who works for CeX so I was wondering if you had any similar stories, because I don't even work there and it pisses me off.
11 posts omitted. Last 50 posts shown. Expand all images.
>> No. 13969 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 3:13 pm
13969 spacer
Judging by the jumble of stock and some of the insane pricing (seriously I was looking at a second hand camcorder once which was £20 more than the brand new better version of it in Argos at the other end of the high street) they have no effective or powerful centralised form of stock control.

Apparently staff can shift prices by 10% on certain things, but that's often not enough considering how fast the market moves. They desperately need to employ someone to oversee stock control and logistics, perhaps even just extend those powers to the loss prevention team.
>> No. 13998 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 9:35 pm
13998 spacer
>>13917
You're probably thinking of this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-26979061

CeX and the bigger chains like CashConverters do their darndest to avoid that problem, much like big fast food chains work very hard on their food hygiene because one incident of food poisoning tarnishes the lot.
>> No. 14001 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 10:16 pm
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>>13998

Yes, exactly that.

True - but although I was sarcastic, I still wouldn't buy a single thing from them. 20 quid knocked off a greasy mobile doesn't appeal to me much. I have no idea how these places stay aloft.
>> No. 14002 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 10:31 pm
14002 spacer
>>14001

I assume you're unfamiliar with their buy in policies.

They have Grades. Buying a Grade A product from them is "as new" but it is cheaper.

Do you work for Carphone Warehouse?
>> No. 14004 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:16 pm
14004 spacer
I went to buy a Rocksmith Cable having seen one in there a few days earlier.
It wasn't on the shelf where it was when I saw it, so queued up then asked if they had any, the woman said "I don't think so" and just stood there saying nothing else, I didn't have the patience to ask if she could look and just got one off ebay.
Shit story like but just adding it.
>> No. 14005 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:25 pm
14005 spacer
So lads. If I were to hypothetically find a phone in a public place and instead of doing my good duty of returning it, decided to sell it at a CEX, could I get fucked if the original owner reported it missing?
>> No. 14008 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:31 pm
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>>14004

Their problem is they hire a lot of hot women and neck beards. Neither have stellar social skills when it comes to dealing with the public, which in retail isn't that great.

Training should override any terrible communication skills though, she should have at least offered to check.

Stirling is the only decent one in Scotland, I think. I know how this sounds, but it is mostly men who work there. I think the Manager is gay though, he looks gay. Maybe that's why it is mostly men.
>> No. 14009 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:31 pm
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>>14005
You usually need a receipt now to show proof of purchase if you're going to sell it.
>> No. 14010 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:33 pm
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>>14004
The only thing I've bought from there was a game. When I got home I discovered it was missing 2/3 discs. So I never got to play it.
>> No. 14011 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:34 pm
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>>14008
>I think the Manager is gay though
Takes one to know one!
>> No. 14012 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:35 pm
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>>14005

You wouldn't be able to sell stuff there anymore and they would call the police, which would leave you in the shit. So yes.

>>14009

You don't require proof of purchase, just proof of identity.
>> No. 14013 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:36 pm
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>>14011

Duh.
>> No. 14014 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:37 pm
14014 spacer
>>14010

Fucking hell.

Was it Blue Dragon or a PC game?
>> No. 14015 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:37 pm
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>>14012
You do for mobile phones, as stated earlier people are trying to sell stolen ones or even contract ones.
>> No. 14018 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:47 pm
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>>14014
Manhunt (PC). I take comfort in how this thread has played out. In the past they've received more positive treatment.
>> No. 14019 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:52 pm
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>>14002

Yes the grading - so if it's been "used" but good as new, they sell it next to the RRP.

Where would they get this stock from, and what kind of fool would sell a mint condition phone for such a rock bottom price? Either they haven't heard of eBay, or are elderly.
>> No. 14020 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:57 pm
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>>14008
>Neither have stellar social skills

You're tell me.

I was in a cash-converters, I saw a interesting looking guitar, so I asked the lass if I could try it out. Now, I test out guitars all the time, the usual routine is that the shop keeper either nods and/or takes off any security locks. She took it off, but stood there awkwardly instead of fucking off.

I'm a bit self-concious about my playing so naturally I wasn't good playing in front of a stranger. She made it worse with small talk "Yeah, my boyfriend plays guitar - I don't know anything about them tee hee hee!"

"uh, heh, alright".
>> No. 14021 Anonymous
16th April 2014
Wednesday 11:58 pm
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>>14020
No, he was talking about the staff, not their customers.
>> No. 14024 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 12:12 am
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>>14021

Hah.

>>14019

> Either they haven't heard of eBay, or are elderly.

This applies to both the buyers and sellers, in my opinion. I can vaguely understand the desperate for cash right now selling things in there, but I'm not entirely sure why anyone would ever buy from there unless they simply don't have a credit/debit card or can't figure out Paypal.
>> No. 14029 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 12:56 am
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>>14019

That depends. Their prices reflect demand.

Their business model works on the concept of supply and demand. They give people more than the RRP for things at launch as a result of this to get stock.

I remember the day the iPone 5s came out, CeX were buying them for 900 quid, but they retailed for only £705. They were selling them for £950 though. It is just how it works.

They are opening up shops all over the place, so it must work.
>> No. 14034 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 1:55 am
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>>14029
Thats pretty high risk though - they must be adamant that a product will sell for such a bloody high price (and only for a meagre profit margin). And specifically sell to morons.

I never could get why someone must have the latest toy the day it comes out, of course it will be 50 - 100% more expensive. And for what? That you can brag about it?

Puzzling.
>> No. 14037 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 2:24 am
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>>14034
Low margin, quick turnaround. When was the last time an iPhone launched where supply could meet demand? Did it ever happen? There's probably more risk in their used stock, where items won't sell before they become obsolete in this country. I'm sure they then export them though.
>> No. 14041 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 11:00 am
14041 spacer
Every CeX store I've been in has it's own kind of atmosphere. One of them had a kind of humid environment made fo sweat and Body odeur the other was dusty and dry.

Not gonna make another thread for it but in the past 2 days, 2 people have came up to me at work and asked if a four cheese pizza has meat in it while the box they hold has a big green V on the front of it.
>> No. 14042 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 1:03 pm
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>>14041
To be fair, during the cheval affair there was all manner of stuff in food that shouldn't have been there. They may be undercover reporters who have found that your four cheese pizza with a big green V on the box does in fact contain meat by-products.
>> No. 14046 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 10:33 pm
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>>14029

I understand this part of the business, the one I do not is how they will give you a price for anything. They must have thousands of copies of FIFA 2008, which they are never going to sell at 50p, but they will still buy them in your bundle of games for 10p or 20p. That must add up after a while, even if it is only a minor part of their turnover compared to selling juicy stuff like hard drives and iPhones.

I guess it's worth buying junk just so they get the more valuable stuff you see some types carrying in, rather than them thinking "GAME will just take all of it while Cex are picky". I don't mean to be judgemental but it's always JB Sports gym bags.
>> No. 14047 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 10:47 pm
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>>14046

>I don't mean to be judgemental but it's always JB Sports gym bags.

When I worked in an independent record shop, we always had scally lads coming in with boxes full of CDs with titles like "CLUBLAND PRESENTS: THE HARDEST HARD DANCE ANTHEMS OF ALL HARD TIME - HARD EDITION". They were always absolutely fucking mystified at how the old LPs on the wall could be worth hundreds while their BANGIN CHOONS weren't worth using as a drinks coaster. After a while, I started telling them to toddle off to Crack Converters before their box hit the counter. Of course, we had exactly the opposite economics to the used game business - we wanted the oldest and most obscure rather than the latest and greatest.

I expect that CEX just write it off as a marketing expense, figuring that it's worth spending a few pence to keep people coming back.
>> No. 14048 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 10:52 pm
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>>14046

They reduce the buy/sell price to the point that they sell more than they buy in.

They are doing this with their PS2/Xbox/GC stock right now. It is all going for really cheap and to discourage people trading stuff in, you are lucky if you are getting 50p a game.
>> No. 14049 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 10:53 pm
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>>14047
What happens if a hapless numpty walks in with something worth a serious amount without them realising? Would you tell them exactly what it's worth or try and play it cool and offer a few quid? I guess it's a lot less obvious in records than it is for most video games or technology whether something is a priceless gem or old tat.
>> No. 14051 Anonymous
17th April 2014
Thursday 11:34 pm
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>>14049

It didn't happen often, but we'd play fair. In that sort of business, your reputation as a dealer counts for a great deal and you don't want to piss it up the wall for the sake of a few quid.

It just doesn't happen very often that someone completely clueless comes in with something very valuable. Only a tiny proportion of records are worth more than a couple of quid, and generally only if they're in excellent condition. You only tend to see it when a serious collector has died and a relative is clearing out their stuff. In those circumstances, you're very conscious of the reputational risk - it just takes one of their old friends to get wind that you've ripped off a widow and your business is finished.

The seller still wouldn't get anywhere near the book value for it. As a rule, the rarer something is, the harder it is to sell. You've got to factor in the cost of keeping your stock; You're effectively giving the seller a loan that only gets repaid when you find a buyer.

It's not just a case of buying the record and sticking it in the racks - for properly rare stuff, you'll often spend a lot of time ringing around your contacts to find a buyer, so there can be many hours of work invested in the sale of a single record. Sometimes you're lucky and know that there's a buyer waiting, sometimes you'll have a very expensive albatross hanging around your neck. Sometimes a record just wouldn't sell and would seem to glare at you, as if it's saying "Why did you pay £150 for me you mug, you're never going to sell me, the Price Guide is a fucking liar!".
>> No. 14053 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 12:16 am
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>>14048
The mark up on some of the titles from that gen is ridiculous. I've been looking at the Shin Megami Tensei games for PS2, and the amount CEX sells them for compared to how much they buy them for is astounding.

Persona 4: Sell for £30, buy for £6. I got it brand new online in December for about £15, and also on the US PSN store this week for $10 which is nothing.
Persona 3 FES: Sell for £28, buy for £5. It's under a tenner on the PSN store.
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army: Sell for £32, buy for £6. Again, $10 on the US PSN store.

I can't see anyone selling the games to CEX for such a small amount, especially when the shop then sells them for more than 500% of the price they pay you.

Having said that, managed to get decent bargains on some other relatively niche games at CEX so they're not all bad. I just wouldn't trade anything in to them.
>> No. 14054 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 12:25 am
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>>14053

Is there any point in buying second hand PS2 games any more?
The boxes might be nice, but they lack the appeal of the infinite libraries that internet downloads provide for free.

Plus a lot of PS2 games look great when rendered at decent resolutions, and you can get all sorts of obscure releases that never made it over here such as FFXII: International Zodiac edition. Oh those crazy Japanese naming conventions.
>> No. 14055 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 12:44 am
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>>14054
Those graphics actually look alright for PS2. Which reminds me, I recently played on a mate's Xbone and it really does not seem to show the obvious game experience increase over the PS3/Xbox360 as the previous leap up from PS2/Xbox. Maybe I'm just looking at things through the eyes of marketing and nostalgia due to desiring a PS3 for a long time as a teenlad but being completely disinterested in the new generation.
>> No. 14056 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 12:45 am
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>>14054

Your average joe has no concept of what an emulator is or how to download bios, roms, etc.

I didn't even know what an emulator was until 2007, and I've been building computers since I was a teen.
>> No. 14057 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 12:50 am
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>>14055

The upscale from 720p to 1080p isn't noticeable on screen below 40 inches, not to me at least.

Really, it is just buzz. It looks maybe 10 to 20 percent better.

However, early PS2 games suffered from shitty graphics that looked last gen for a long time. It might take a few years, but the graphics will come.

All anyone is talking about the gen is graphics. PC gamers have poisoned the well more than a bit.
>> No. 14058 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 1:05 am
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>>14054
My computer that was capable of PS2 emulation decided to die, and I can't afford a new one. Not too bothered about PC gaming anymore, so I can't justify the purchase of one.
>> No. 14059 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 1:18 am
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>>14056
You'd be surprised. I know a lot of totally non-technical people who run nintendo roms on their phones.
>> No. 14060 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 1:30 am
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>>14057
PS3 can already play games in 1080p though, so it's hardly an upscale. I wasn't just talking about graphics though, no single element of the whole experience made me even slightly weak at the knees from playing a next gen games console.
>> No. 14061 Anonymous
18th April 2014
Friday 3:18 am
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>>14060

It's the law of diminishing returns. Most other media reached a plateau long ago where improvements in quality are no longer noticeable.

A CD at 16/44.1 covers the entire range of human hearing; Even then, most people don't care about the quality differences between compressed MP3s and full-quality uncompressed audio. Blu-ray has been a massive disappointment for the movie industry, as hardly anyone cares about the improved resolution over DVD. Again, most people prefer lower-quality but more convenient streaming formats. Cinema projection has hardly improved in quality since the introduction of digital surround sound in the 1990s.

I think that gaming has approached that plateau. We are still seeing small, incremental improvements in quality, but nothing particularly revolutionary. Sales of all the next-gen consoles have been a huge disappointment for the manufacturers and the market really doesn't seem to care. I suspect that nothing major will change until the introduction of VR (Oculus Rift et al).

In many ways, the game industry seems to be moving backwards, with many studios choosing to produce less visually spectacular games on a lower budget. You just can't take creative risks if you're spending $50-100m to develop a game, hence the huge number of generic franchise updates. The market can't sustain itself forever on the next instalment of Call of WarFifa.
>> No. 14082 Anonymous
19th April 2014
Saturday 9:20 am
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>>14061
I care about the difference between 128 kbit CBR MP3s and CDs, because the former sound shit unless you're listening through the earphones that came with your phone.

>Call of WarFifa
I'm nicking that idea.
>> No. 14210 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 4:46 pm
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>>14060
>PS3 can already play games in 1080p though, so it's hardly an upscale.
Almost no PS3 games actually run at 1080p internally, though.

I think people are forgetting that it generally takes time for games on new consoles to look significantly better than the previous generation. Anyone remember the 360 launch? The joke then was that it was a machine for playing Geometry Wars. Gears of War didn't come out for a full year after launch. The games that did launch with it - Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero, that I remember - looked barely any better than original Xbox games.

>Sales of all the next-gen consoles have been a huge disappointment for the manufacturers and the market really doesn't seem to care.
Is that true? I don't follow sales news particularly (and don't care about the new consoles) but I heard they were doing pretty well.
>> No. 14212 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 5:51 pm
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>>14210

PS4 is the fastest selling console of all time.

Xbox One and Wii U have had disappointing launches, though. Microsoft brought it on themselves, Nintendo are just not advertising for some reason.
>> No. 14215 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 8:31 pm
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>>14212

Nintendo have basically given up. They thought they'd found their niche in the geriatrics who "don't play games"... but then didn't consider that the people in this niche aren't the kind of people who see a point in upgrading their hardware, or are clever enough to notice a difference between "Wii" and "Wii U".

The fact that many retailers didn't notice a difference either and scattered Wii and Wii U games together didn't help.
>> No. 14216 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 9:57 pm
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>>14215
Shame really, as the Wii U gamepad has the potential for some interesting gameplay, though at the moment it's not dissimilar to when the DS first came out, and the screen not in use was used for map/inventory/menus as it took a while for people to make proper use of it. An obvious good use for the gamepad would be for scanning things in a Metroid Prime game. ZombiU used it as a scanner, which was neat, but the game was generally shit. Kind of hoping the inevitable Zelda installment makes good use of it. Skyward Sword, even though it wasn't the most fun game I've played, was probably the best game in terms of making the most of motion controls.
>> No. 14218 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 10:27 pm
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>>14216
I'm not convinced by the whole "second screen" argument in games. I've had occasion to play BattleField 4 on the PS4 whilst running the Battlelog app on my iPad/laptop at the same time - ostensibly this is a fabulous feature, as you tootle around the game on the PS4, you have a handheld/laptop screen showing you the entire game map and all the players. It's nice to be able to tweak the load out of guns before playing the game on the console, but I've noticed, fabulous feature thought it is, it is highly distracting to take your eyes off the main screen and use the second screen - technically brilliant, but ergonomically troublesome. I think the WiiU has exactly the same problem.
>> No. 14219 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 10:41 pm
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>>14218

The Wii U is the controller though, it isn't sitting on your knee it is more or less on your eye level.

A lot of PC gamers are hoping it gets jailbroken so the modding community can get their claws into it.

Nintendo would probably come down on them like a ton of bricks, the silly sods. If the modding community got into Wii U controller mods, they'd sell a bucket load of gamepads.
>> No. 14221 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 10:53 pm
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>>14219

The problem is they're not selling the gamepads without the console.
>> No. 14222 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 11:07 pm
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>>14221

They are in Japan, I think. Just not in The West.

If they do start to sell them in The West I don't think it'll be long before they get hacked. You can use the Gamepad as a Universal Controller for you TV and sky box, etc, so I imagine you could probably mod it to work like one of those Smart Pads you use to control your house.
>> No. 14223 Anonymous
22nd April 2014
Tuesday 11:31 pm
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>>14222
I'm led to believe the Wii U was broken the Christmas before last. Presumably the pad is aiready worked out.
>> No. 14227 Anonymous
23rd April 2014
Wednesday 2:56 am
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>>14218
It depends how well it's implemented. Again, using the example of ZombiU, taking your eyes off the screen to look at the gamepad when scanning the environment created a lot of tension. Every time you scanned, you were putting yourself at risk due to taking your eyes off the screen, which I believe was an intentional design choice.

The Wonderful 101 used the second screen relatively well too. Can use the touchscreen to draw the shapes necessary to transform the team (though I prefer using the right stick), but the stand out thing was that when you enter a building, the interior is displayed on the gamepad while the telly still shows the exterior. This was used for a few puzzles and stuff, which was a nice use. Though this was used in Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube when connecting a GBA, so it's hardly an innovation.

A Four Swords game would work well with the gamepads actually.
>> No. 14228 Anonymous
23rd April 2014
Wednesday 7:04 am
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>>14219
>A lot of PC gamers are hoping it gets jailbroken so the modding community can get their claws into it.
The Wii U's security was broken way back (inside of a month after launch I think), there was a presentation at CCC about it. As I recall, they explained that they weren't making public the code used as there was so little homebrew potential for the system, i.e. the hack would only have enabled piracy. If it had just been some random online group I'd have assumed it was bullshit but it was by some of the same folks who broke open the Wii.

>Nintendo would probably come down on them like a ton of bricks, the silly sods. If the modding community got into Wii U controller mods, they'd sell a bucket load of gamepads.
The problem there is that Nintendo probably don't make real money on hardware - historically, most console manufacturers have made their living via licensing revenue from software sales, often making a substantial loss on hardware that is subsidised over the lifetime of the console via a decent attach rate in software. People buying the gamepad and then not buying any games is indistinguishable from piracy, from their perspective.

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