Hardware Broken Gamepad repair

[kassemmel]

hi guys/girls,

I don't even know how it exactly happened, but when i turned on my gamepad today it looked like this:

Well, not exactly like i remember it from yesterday. Nevertheless the buttons are working fine, touchscreen is working as well but the screen isn't. I checked nintendo europe's page and they want 57,50 - 164,51 EUR depending on whether they can repair it or have to send me a new one.
Does anyone have experience with nintendo's repair service? I don't really care about the screen but in some games you really want it AND i want my zelda gamepad and not a random normal gamepad back. To be honest it doesn't look like one of those touchscreen+display combinations like in modern smartphones and they just have to replace the display. I would even do it myself if anyone knows a seller for those displays.I am really worried they would charge me a shitton of money.

tl;dr:
does anyone know whether this is possible to fix myself?
any suggestions where to look for display?

how does nintendo europe handle this? would they repair it? how much do they charge for it (if anyone had a similar case?

thank you

 

[shinkodachi]

Chances are if they need to send you a replacement unit that it will be a generic Wii U GamePad without the Zelda theming. It's possible that they can repair it if it's just the screen assembly that requires swapping, but in case there's more underlying damage that they discover, it may be cheaper for them to simply replace the entire unit.

You can try to fix it yourself, there are guides on how to disassemble it (e.g. iFixit has a teardown of the Wii U including the Wii U GamePad with fairly concise and straightforward steps) and you'll likely find parts on eBay. It's hard to say what exactly is genuine vs. fake, but use your better judgment and generally avoid anything that seems too good to be true. If you replace the screen assembly and put a cheap knockoff part in its place, you'll likely end up with new problems. So try to look for good quality parts.

You'll also need to be a bit handy with electronics. I believe the Wii U GamePad is simple to repair yourself, so if you're comfortable with handling a screwdriver and have messed around with electronics before, it shouldn't be a problem to you. However, before attempting to open up the Wii U GamePad yourself and thus voiding any warranty that you may have, I'd check with Nintendo and send them an email with the picture attached to ask them for a ballpark figure on how much it's going to cost and whether they're going to repair or replace the Wii U GamePad.

You can of course try to see if someone is selling their (working) Wii U GamePad, buy that, and just replace the casing with yours.