after the second “boom” of fighting games, Sanwa caught on and realized their parts would be in high demand again. unfortunately, they can’t put out the amount of products to meet demand from their plants in Japan. so they must have production facilities in China to meet up with demand.
I make this claim because I’m noticing some weird shit. I have 3 sets of OBSF 30’s that i got in 2004, and 2 JLFs. When SF4 came out, I bought a TE, and 2 more sets of buttons and joysticks for custom sticks. The weirdest thing is that the JLF in my TE started to wear out after 1 1/2 year of heavy use. The microswitches were fucked, the mounted PCB had some electrical problems, and the spring was not strong. A few of the buttons died out, but that’s to be expected. I also noticed that the plastic on the OBSF’s aren’t as durable as they once were. I took out the switches, and did a durability test where I dropped a 30lb dumbell on the old one and new one. The new one came out a little bit dented, but the new one was completely shattered.
point being, my new parts get faulty while the older ones still work despite many years of use and abuse. am I being paranoid, or am I on to something? does anyone have input or real info on this subject.
Switches are not made by Sanwa Denshi Ltd.
They are made by Omron Corporation.
Blame them.
GeorgeC
4
I accept that there are going to be occasional production lapses and SOME defective parts will be sold. If the defective parts are well under 10% of a run – guess shot in the dark, 4% or less(?) --, that’s considered acceptable.
But then again, in the US “full-employment” is considered 4% unemployment or less.
Yeah, buggy parts and electronics stink but just about nobody hasn’t purchased a lemon at one point in time. I’ve bought maybe 4 consoles and computers that had problems… Three had to be sent back to the original manufacturer and fixed or replaced. In one case, I was so disgusted that I completely got rid of all the controllers and games in addition to the defective console and didn’t buy anything from that manufacturer for close to five years. (I still wish that I had at least kept the Hori Namco joysticks… I could have gotten good money for my near-mint condition joysticks! Of course, those joysticks would have been gathering dust for close to ten years, too…)
Some companies just have a reputation for not caring as much as others.
For all the Sanwa and Seimitsu parts I’ve bought, for instance, they’ve never been as cranky and unreliable as some videogame consoles I’ve bought in the past… I’m convinced at this point in time that Sega and Nintendo were the last two companies on Earth that actually built their consoles to survive the most Ritalin-deprived users and occasional “knocking.” Occasional knocking breaks Sony and Microsoft consoles!!!
Consider also that if you take any controller to a tournament and subject it to harder or longer than normal use and/or pass it around for friends to use, parts will be worn out quicker. A tournament is NOT normal use; that’s much harder than average wear. Most people don’t play anything like 20 hours or more a week with joystick controllers. If you got one-and-a-half years of use before a JLF PCB/microswitches died after after hard use at multiple tournaments, that’s considered damn good by most anybody’s standards.
As for the TE PCB, that shouldn’t be malfunctioning now… Then again, the MC PCB’s have never been as reliable or durable as Hori’s or some third-party PCB’s, either. The Round 1 and Round 2 TE’s especially were notorious for breaking down quickly PCB-wise; this problem affected both the 360 and PS3 versions but was more pronounced on the 360 production PCB for sure. Mad Catz says the problem was fixed after “Round 3” TE’s were produced but I haven’t played enough with the TE’s regularly to really notice. I usually play more often with modded Hori joysticks and Cthulu-equipped joysticks at any rate…
I am assuming by ROUND 3 you mean the TE-S? And if this is the case, Mad Catz is on “Round 4” so to speak as far as PCB reliability is [key word]** supposed** to be now.
I agree that Tourney players are much more rough than the average home player. Take in consideration that Arcade parts are designed to be played primarily in the Arcade with hundreds of users using said parts each day. Average Japanese parts last a year and a half to 2 years assuming no serious abuse takes place.
A serious Tourney player can put in as much game time (in a year) solo as a moderately busy Arcade would be (same time frame) for 1 arcade cab.
Happ/IL Parts can last 5 years in a Arcade environment under** ideal conditions**, but I seen Happ parts requiring full replacement (not just switch swamping) after 6 months of some hard core abuse. Hard Core includes but not limited too trying to clean up cigarette burns and ash, and beer and soda residue. And once saw a player bend a IL joystick shaft and crack the wooden under panel with how hard he hitting the joystick at a North Carolina mall’s Arcade.
