WASHINGTON—The following excerpt comes from official court proceedings investigating alleged consumer deception surrounding the latest console hardware revisions.
Q: Please state your name for the record.
A: Arthur Pendelton. I serve as Chief Hardware Engineer for global consumer electronics.
Q: Mr. Pendelton, did your team conduct a recent Nintendo Switch 2 teardown on the revised European model?
A: Yes. We unscrewed the casing last Tuesday. We expected a modern display manufactured by Sharp Corporation.
Q: What did you find inside instead?
A: We found a monochrome green dot-matrix screen from a 1989 Game Boy. It runs on two AA batteries. The back shell holds them together with duct tape.
Q: A 1989 screen? Why would any manufacturer include thirty-year-old parts in a Nintendo Switch 2 teardown sample?
A: It saved the company eleven cents per unit. We also removed the backlight. Gamers must now sit directly under a floor lamp to see the action.
Q: Surely this is an isolated incident restricted to one factory?
A: No. Every major tech company does this now. We tested six competing devices yesterday. A rival smartphone used two tin cans tied together with string.
Q: Are you testifying that the entire hardware industry deliberately downgrades products during mid-cycle revisions?
A: Absolutely. Last week my team opened a luxury smart television. Inside, we found a small, tired man holding a flashlight behind a piece of wax paper. He draws the frames by hand. He earns four dollars an hour.
Q: My God. Is anything inside these modern devices actual new technology?
A: Only the glue. The glue costs more than the chips now. At press time, Pendelton confessed that the courtroom microphone was actually a painted plastic spoon attached to a paper cup.
