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Nintendo Switch Operating System Video Appears After Console Accidentally Sent Out Early

That's certainly one potential bonus for preordering.

202 Comments

A retailer has accidentally sent out a Nintendo Switch two weeks ahead of launch, it would seem.

NeoGAF user hiphoptherobot today posted a picture on the forum, claiming they had been sent a system early. To prove this, they've since published a video showing the initial setup process for the system, as well as its main menu and settings. We'd gotten a brief look at its menu a few times before, but much of this is new.

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Now Playing: GS News Update: Nintendo Switch Operating System Video Appears

You can see all of this in the video above. It's possible Nintendo will force it to be taken down, but it remains online as of this writing.

Perhaps most importantly, we learn the system apparently has 25.9 GB of free space out of the box. This can be expanded further with microSDXC cards up to 2 TB in size.

As for how this ended up in their hands, hiphoptherobot says they simply got lucky.

"[I]t isn't like I grabbed it off the back of a truck or anything," they wrote. "I just happened to get lucky because unnamed store decided to ship early for whatever reason."

They noted that they were contemplating selling it to make up for the cost of home repairs but expressed concern that Nintendo could intervene.

Switch officially launches worldwide on March 3 for $300.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

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IndoJimbo

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I love coming to the comments section on every Switch article on Gamespot, just to see all the people trying to justify themselves for not getting a Switch at launch or ever for that matter.

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lostn

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@indojimbo: There's not much to justify. They're sold out, so even if you wanted it, you can't get one.

If you own a Wii U, there's nothing to play on Switch until Mario which doesn't come out till holiday 17. And that's assuming you want to play a Mario game in a real looking world, like Sonic 2006, which I don't.

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IndoJimbo

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Edited By IndoJimbo

@lostn: Thats your opinion, I cant wait to play Splatoon 2

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lostn

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@indojimbo: Thats your opinion, I cant wait to play Splatoon 2

Is it my opinion that they are sold out? No, it's a damn fact. Get with the program.

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lostn

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@rickjamesia: There's several other games coming out before then. Arms won't be on Wii U and neither will Splatoon 2. Super Bomberman R is a Switch exclusive and while not interesting to me is something like the first console Bomberman release in 7 years. Many others are not exclusive but will not be on Wii U, like Syberia 3 (pretty excited about that, honestly need to go back and replay the first two), Stardew Valley, Disgaea 5, Skyrim (but who really wants to buy a stripped down version), I Am Setsuna, Steep, Sonic Mania, etc. Now some of those may be as late as or after Super Mario Odyssey, but the first few I mentioned are coming much sooner.

I don't want any of those games. They're either available elsewhere or they don't appeal to me. So for me, there is nothing to play until holidays.

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Isariamkia

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Edited By Isariamkia

@rickjamesia: I just bought Syberia and Syberia 2 withing a cheap bundle, are they good ? I saw some articles about Syberia 3 and it seems nice.

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Doctor_MG

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@lostn:

There aren't too many people that do own a Wii U, and I don't know why people are imagining there are. The joke used to be "no one owns a Wii U" now the joke is "why buy a Switch what I could play on the Wii U"

I don't get it...

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lostn

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@doctor_mg: There aren't too many people that do own a Wii U, and I don't know why people are imagining there are. The joke used to be "no one owns a Wii U" now the joke is "why buy a Switch what I could play on the Wii U"

14 million own a Wii U. That's all of the Nintendo faithful. That is more consoles than a Zelda game has ever sold. Everyone who wants a Zelda has a Wii U already. There are 2 Zelda games on it and Hyrule Warriors plus BotW which was promised for Wii U long ago. If you're buying Switch at launch for Zelda, chances are you already have a Wii U.

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Doctor_MG

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Edited By Doctor_MG

@lostn:

I want Zelda and I don't own a Wii U. I've literally just disproved your theory.

Just because 14 million people own a Wii U doesn't mean only those 14 million people want to play Zelda. The Last of Us sold 7 million on PS3 and 5 million on PS4. Now either almost everyone double dipped or some people didn't purchase The Last of Us for PS3 and purchased it for the PS4 instead. Which is it?

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lostn

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Edited By lostn

@doctor_mg: I want Zelda and I don't own a Wii U. I've literally just disproved your theory.

1. Why didn't you get a Wii U?

2. Do you play any Nintendo games other than Zelda?

Mario Kart and Smash didn't entice you? Nor did Mario 3D Land? Splatoon? Mario Maker? Not even the promise of Zelda on Wii U? The tech demo showed an awesome looking Zelda. It wasn't what they eventually made, but BotW was shown for Wii U years ago. That wasn't enough to get you to buy a Wii U? How about the two Zelda HD remasters and Hyrule Warriors? All of these amazing Nintendo games and none of them interested you at all?

Are you a Zelda fan, or a Nintendo fan?

3. What else from Nintendo will you be buying on Switch, and why weren't you interested in those franchises when they came to Wii U? Please don't tell me you're going to buy Splatoon 2 and the Mario Kart port. You weren't interested the first time around.

Now either almost everyone double dipped or some people didn't purchase The Last of Us for PS3 and purchased it for the PS4 instead.

That's utter BS. The sales of TLOU on PS4 don't come close to the sales of the PS3 version. Some of those were double dips, and some were from people who skipped PS3. "Almost everyone" is not backed by any numbers.

Secondly, TLOU is not near as associated with Playstation as Zelda is to a Nintendo console. Zelda is an iconic franchise of Nintendo. TLOU is not an iconic IP of Sony. It's just one game of many. You buy a Nintendo console, you are buying it for Mario, Zelda and Metroid. You can't separate those franchises from Nintendo as a brand. They are Nintendo. The same cannot be said of pretty much any Sony owned IP. Sony simply does not have mascot characters, or IPs so endemic to their brand as Mario and Zelda is to Nintendo. Sony's identity does not rest on a few massive IPs. They make a ton more IPs, none of them selling the kind of numbers Mario does, and therefore none of them being the face of Playstation.

If you're a die hard fan of Nintendo's games, you most likely bought a Wii U. If you didn't, you simply aren't. How about you?

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Doctor_MG

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Edited By Doctor_MG

@lostn:

I've owned every Nintendo console up until that point. I've spent countless hours playing Super Smash Bros, Mario, and Zelda. Yes, I love Zelda, and Mario. Splatoon is actually my favorite new IP this generation outside of Bloodborn, though that Gamepad was difficult to get used to. I .wanted to play Xenoblade Chronicles X, and Pikmin 3 as I loved the previous entries in the series (especially Pikmin 2)

I can't tell you why I don't own a Wii U. I wanted one, but every time I was presented with an opportunity to purchase I didn't.

That's utter BS. The sales of TLOU on PS4 don't come close to the sales of the PS3 version. Some of those were double dips, and some were from people who skipped PS3. "Almost everyone" is not backed by any numbers.

Actually, they do. They are really close. The Last of Us is the second or third highest selling "exclusive" on the PS4. And that last part "and some were from people who skipped PS3"...that is precisely my point. Some people skipped the Wii U as well (a lot did).

And you are right, The Last of Us isn't as iconic as Zelda. But you do realize that the Wii U hasn't received a proper original Zelda title yet, right? So anyone who is a huge Zelda fan, may have been waiting for Zelda to drop. Same with Metroid, or F-zero. As a matter of fact, it could very well be the lack of Nintendo's more core IP's that caused a lot of Nintendo fans to skip the system.

I am a Nintendo fan. I have the Switch pre-ordered with Zelda, and I'm replaying all the other Zelda games in preparation. I'm excited for Mario, Arms, Splatoon 2, and hopefully a new Metroid. But I didn't purchase the Wii U.

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ArabrockermanX

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@doctor_mg: "There aren't too many people that do own a Wii U," this guy gets it... If you don't own a Wii U, remasters and ports aren't a bad deal...

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lonewolf1044

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Edited By lonewolf1044

I still rather wait for a price drop and I have patience being I own Computers and almost every console. Hopefully they will not pull the number they did with the new 3DS, you had to buy the power adapter separately.

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Nintendojitsu

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@lonewolf1044: You are going to be waiting at least a year or more until the first price drop. The demand is that great.

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Doctor_MG

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@lonewolf1044:

An AC adapter comes with the Switch. No need to fear. Also, it uses the common USB type C, so if you lose the charger you can replace it easily and cheaply.

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Doctor_MG

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Edited By Doctor_MG

@computernoises:

What are you talking about? It does come with an AC adapter....(the switch I mean)

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Doctor_MG

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Edited By Doctor_MG

@computernoises:

Ah, my bad. Apologies.

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lostn

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Edited By lostn

@computernoises: They could have easily designed the switch power adapter to use the same adapter as Wii U. Then say, just use that, you already have one anyway.

And btw, I did not have a 3DS power cable. It used the same one as DSi. I had DS Lite which is not compatible.

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Daveof89

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@lostn: That would not work, given the poor sales of the wii u compared to what they're hoping for the switch.

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dirthurts

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Edited By dirthurts

@lostn: The 3DS charger isn't powerful enough to charge the Switch while the switch is running. It would just die while you were charging it. We're in a whole new power consumption bracket now. It requires a higher output charger, because physics.

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lostn

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@dirthurts: The 3DS charger isn't powerful enough to charge the Switch while the switch is running.

I said Wii U not 3DS.

The 3DS charger was a reply to someone else who said everyone had 3DS chargers already so New 3DS didn't need to include one.

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dirthurts

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@lostn: My mistake. Even so, the Wii U charger only pushes 1.6 amps, which is still unlikely to be enough. My galaxy phone requires at least two, and that's a much lower drain device than the switch will be. It's probably going to require about 5.

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Lodmot347

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Here are my thoughts:

Positive:

I love the way the OS looks. The initial setup sound effects are freaking great, as KahnArtizt pointed out. The interface is nice and clean, and it looks super fast. I'm intrigued with what the TV connectivity would be like. I somehow doubt that would mean DLNA support, but you never know. :3 But overall, I'm really liking the way this looks, and I'm so happy they've kept the Mii features. At least you still have something to do with the console if you didn't have enough money to get any games yet. Also, the dark and light themes are awesome. I'd definitely use both of them and have the light theme for daytime use and the dark theme for nighttime use. o u o

Negatives:

Even though I liked a lot of what I saw, there's definitely a lot that I wish was there. One thing that sucks is that there's no web browser, which has already been covered. I personally don't need one, but I can see a lot of people who were absolutely banking on that being a feature. I could've also found it particularly useful if I'm like on a plane, or sleeping over a friends' house, and I didn't want to have to carry too many devices on me. Other things I noticed is that it seems like the Switch is particularly lacking in other activities. Setting aside the lack of a web browser for now, you also don't have Miiverse anymore, and because the Switch doesn't have an integrated webcam, you don't get all the funky "photobooth"-esque features that you find on the 3DS, etc. Even my DSi from like 2010 had a webcam, and a bunch of photo features to manipulate and distort your face and stuff. That was REALLY addicting! The 25 GB of free space is also kind of iffy too. An operating system this barren of features and this simple should not need that much space... That's another one of those things where I don't believe it will bother me too much, but I can see it being a hassle for other people. But overall, for a console that has a $300 price point, I would expect it to be more feature-packed out of the box. So that disappoints me a bit.

Overall thoughts:

It may seem like my negatives outweigh the positives, but I'm still eager to receive my pre-order for this console. I also like Nintendo much better than Microsoft and Sony, so I'm glad to invest my money towards Nintendo's console. A lot of the negatives above won't affect me too much, because I have a lot of devices in my home that contain many of the missing features. But I do have my concerns with this console. I'm thinking it will be initially successful, but interest in it will quickly dry up. Assuming they don't do any console upgrades or release a slew of awesome 1st party and 3rd party titles, Nintendo will at most probably have a great 2017 with the Switch, a good 2018, and then have an okay 2019. But that's just me speculating. I could be totally and utterly wrong about this. There's also the whole "stock" situation that seems to be occurring with Nintendo hardware right now. One thing I can tell you is that if your console is not accessible because of stock shortages, developers won't want to make games for a console that's always impossible for people to find, simply put. But, we'll see what happens with that. Hopefully I turn out wrong. o u o

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Isariamkia

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@lodmot347: The browser isn't there at launch because of security issues... It seems the browser was the reason that the 3DS could run pirated games, because it could be hacked with the browser. I don't know how hard it is to secure the console but Nintendo had issues with that and that's why the browser won't be there at launch.

But, they said it could come in an update after some time, we don't know when but it will probably come.

For the used storage, there is two things that explain why the storage is that poor, 1. It's a hybrid console, which mean when you are portable you have to get the storage within the console so they couldn't put something big in there. 2. Nintendo doesn't requires any installation from physical games. The only problem is if you go full digital but then you have to possibility to add storage with MicroSD cards.

And then, if the OS takes that much space on the storage it could mean that some features are not enabled but they are present and will be enabled later with the updates coming.

And for the Mii verse, I don't really have opinions because I never cared for it.

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Nintendojitsu

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@lodmot347: I wish more comments on the Internet were like yours.

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PSYCHOV3N0M

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@lodmot347: I bet you less than 50 people on the entire planet use a Web Browser on their gaming consoles and dedicated handhelds. It is literally much faster and more efficient to browse the web on a smartphone or a computer/laptop.

NO ONE was banking for the Switch to have a web browser. For any reviewer to bring THAT up as a negative point... that's retarded.

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Xirtahm

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Edited By Xirtahm

@lodmot347: I'm curious how you came with the idea that people were "banking" on a web browser. Most people have web browser access on their PCs, tablets and smartphones, so why would it be necessary on the Switch? They added said feature to the PS3 and XBOX 360 years ago, and not once have I ever had to use them, because... you know.... I had a PC and phone that did that more efficiently.

Sorry, but that's not really that big of a deal.

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LTJohnnyRico

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@Xirtahm: Agreed ! I don't think anyone uses a web browser on their consoles - I just pick up my phone or use my PC !

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Sepewrath

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@lodmot347: I cant imagine anyone was banking on an internet browser on a game console. Anyone who drops hundreds of dollars on a game system, likely has far superior means to use the internet.

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IndoJimbo

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@lodmot347: Jesus, cool story bruh lol

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DeadlyMustard

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I like it. The storage really should be 64GB these days, but whatever. Probably the first Nintendo console I'll own since the Wii

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Xirtahm

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@DeadlyMustard: "... since the Wii"

Um... so you just skipped one Nintendo console? It would have been a stronger statement had it been "since the GameCube" or "since the N64". Yay, good for you. You didn't get a Wii U. :|

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DeadlyMustard

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Edited By DeadlyMustard

@computernoises: I really didn't even own the wii, my roomate had one for a while and I really only used it for smash bros. My statement also meant I haven't bought any of their handhelds either, since the Color. There, now that's some distance O_O

Y'all have no chill

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lostn

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@computernoises: He did what 87% of Wii owners did.

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dribblesbarbax

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Oooooh menus. So exciting.

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dirthurts

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@dribblesbarbax: I liked it.

It showed that the console is surprisingly modern, which really uplifted my spirits about it.

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KahnArtizt

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Edited By KahnArtizt

I like how the sound effects of going through initial setup incrementally raises and builds anticipation! Only Nintendo goes the extra mile to implement neat little things like that.

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chiefwiggum16

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@KahnArtizt: then proceed to kick you in the balls with no social stuff or achievements and the need of a mobile app

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Isariamkia

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@chiefwiggum16: "need". Are we sure we ABSOLUTELY need the app and it's not just an option ?

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chiefwiggum16

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@isariamkia: as far as we know yes we need a separate app on our phone and thats what Nintendo has been saying to us. And further proof is the lack of any social stuff on the ui leaked video of the switch

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Isariamkia

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@chiefwiggum16: I thought there still could be something in-game

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deathwish026

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ooooh somebodys getting a hefty fine for this

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ginxeno

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@deathwish026: Or maybe Nintendo was the one releasing it to hypen the gaming website

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lostn

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@deathwish026: Only if Nintendo can find out who sent them out early. The guy is not telling, so chances are they won't.

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deathwish026

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@lostn: there are serial numbers for every console so they can track which store its come from.

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dirthurts

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@lostn: Actually, if they only look up who "guf" or whatever he put his name in as on their server of like 200 people who have one, they'll easily be able to see what console it's connected to, and they track where they ship their units. They'll know if they care.

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