Hardware Circle Pad broken? What should I do?

[Chesta]

So I recently bought a N3DSXL (9.0) and after a few days, I noticed, that my circle pad was sometimes sort of stuck, at least it wouldn't immediately move in the direction I wanted it to. Now I looked a bit closer and saw, that there's a crack in the underlying plastic disc or whatever this is, here's a picture:

Spoiler

Is this fixable? What should I do?

 

[Lucifer666]

That's not a crack! Every 3DS has that.

Used to bug me as well until I realised its meant to be like that. The slit is so that you can wedge the circle pad cap through it during disassembly.

The issue is probably with the analogue mechanism, so it's the thing inside your 3DS rather than the cap outside.

Anyway I had an issue with my 3DS XL where it was really friction-y so it wouldn't always come back to the middle and obviously that really messed up gameplay for me. I bought this and this (didn't really need the latter but I bought it in case) and the replacement was really easy and a perfect fix.

I don't know if these exact parts are the same for the N3DS XL but I'm sure you can find the right equivalent

 

[Deleted-236924]

That crack is normal, it is there so that they can put it together (it wouldn't be possible to put everything together if it was a full disk with no crack in it like this, I'm not entirely sure how to explain it.)

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nintendo+3DS+Circle+Pad+Replacement/6064

I know this isn't for the New 3DS XL, but it shows why the crack in the plastic disc is there and why it is needed.

I haven't been able to find an actual guide on replacing the circle pad for a N3DSXL :/

 

[Harsky]

This picture shows what that "crack" is.

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/ZGqZL2onsIOC5UHQ.huge

And the reason why they cut the disc:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nintendo+3DS+Circle+Pad+Replacement/6064#s26471

 

[Chesta]

Perfect! Thanks for all the replies, now I don't have to worry that something's wrong with my new console. It would have been painful, as it is a < 9.3 one, which is fairly hard to find in my country.