I saw an ad for what looked like the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, for the surprisingly cheap price of 39€ (which is significantly cheaper than its usual price of about 70€.)
The name of the product on the online shop was "Wireless Pro Controller for Nintendo Switch", and the controller itself looked like this:
Cool, that's a quite cheap price for the Pro Controller...
Except... wait... Is that actually what the Pro controller looks like? Feels like there's something odd about it. Let's check what the actual official Nintendo Switch Pro controller looks like:
When comparing the two, quite clear differences immediately pop out. Most prominently the "home" button at the top of that first controller is completely different from the one in the official controller. There also seems to be one button missing, and the "plus" and "minus" buttons are shaped and positioned completely differently. The ABXY buttons have a different material to them. And actually the shape of the controller is different (looking a lot more like an Xbox One controller.) And, of course, there is no "Nintendo Switch" logo.
That is not, in fact, the actual official Nintendo Switch Pro Controller by Nintendo. It's a third-party controller, completely unrelated to Nintendo. However, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for the real thing, if you didn't do the direct comparison. And especially since the thing is named quite confusingly "Wireless Pro Controller for Nintendo Switch".
The controller itself is most probably not any sort of scam or fraud. It probably works just fine, and seemingly even has gyros and rumble motors, like the real thing. It does not have an Amiibo scanner, though.
So on that front I wouldn't consider it a scam. However, I would consider it at least a borderline scam that it's named so confusingly, very potentially making people think it's the actual Pro Controller by Nintendo.
It makes me even more suspicious that online shops selling this product seldom specify which company manufactured it. There doesn't even exist an official manufacturer's web page for this controller. It appears to be sold directly via online shops, without any sort of official webpage from the manufacturer. Some online shops don't even have a company name for it. In the ones that do, it actually varies from shop to shop (I have found names like "Insten", "EEEKit" and "eastvita", all different names, yet clearly the exact same controller).
Reviews (both on those online shops as well as elsewhere) don't indicate it being a scam, but I still can't help but get suspicious when a product has no clear manufacturer name, no official website, and a deliberately confusing name.
I wonder how many people have purchased it believing it to be the actual Pro Controller by Nintendo, only to find out that it doesn't scan their Amiibos.
The name of the product on the online shop was "Wireless Pro Controller for Nintendo Switch", and the controller itself looked like this:
Cool, that's a quite cheap price for the Pro Controller...
Except... wait... Is that actually what the Pro controller looks like? Feels like there's something odd about it. Let's check what the actual official Nintendo Switch Pro controller looks like:
When comparing the two, quite clear differences immediately pop out. Most prominently the "home" button at the top of that first controller is completely different from the one in the official controller. There also seems to be one button missing, and the "plus" and "minus" buttons are shaped and positioned completely differently. The ABXY buttons have a different material to them. And actually the shape of the controller is different (looking a lot more like an Xbox One controller.) And, of course, there is no "Nintendo Switch" logo.
That is not, in fact, the actual official Nintendo Switch Pro Controller by Nintendo. It's a third-party controller, completely unrelated to Nintendo. However, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for the real thing, if you didn't do the direct comparison. And especially since the thing is named quite confusingly "Wireless Pro Controller for Nintendo Switch".
The controller itself is most probably not any sort of scam or fraud. It probably works just fine, and seemingly even has gyros and rumble motors, like the real thing. It does not have an Amiibo scanner, though.
So on that front I wouldn't consider it a scam. However, I would consider it at least a borderline scam that it's named so confusingly, very potentially making people think it's the actual Pro Controller by Nintendo.
It makes me even more suspicious that online shops selling this product seldom specify which company manufactured it. There doesn't even exist an official manufacturer's web page for this controller. It appears to be sold directly via online shops, without any sort of official webpage from the manufacturer. Some online shops don't even have a company name for it. In the ones that do, it actually varies from shop to shop (I have found names like "Insten", "EEEKit" and "eastvita", all different names, yet clearly the exact same controller).
Reviews (both on those online shops as well as elsewhere) don't indicate it being a scam, but I still can't help but get suspicious when a product has no clear manufacturer name, no official website, and a deliberately confusing name.
I wonder how many people have purchased it believing it to be the actual Pro Controller by Nintendo, only to find out that it doesn't scan their Amiibos.
Reminds me that a buddy of mine has a few unofficial controllers for PlayStation 2. Whenever we play games, I suck due to the analog sticks being nothing like in the official controller, and some buttons are also broken and won't work properly. Give me an official Sony controller and I can play pretty well.
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