Blaze addresses Evercade Nexus hardware faults and factory checks

Blaze Entertainment CEO Andrew Byatt has issued an apology and action plan following widespread reports of hardware defects on the newly released Evercade Nexus handheld. Since the console started arriving in collectors' hands after its October 30 launch, social media has filled with posts showing screens popping out of the front shell, faulty D-pads, and certain cartridges failing to read.

First announced on March 31, the $199.99 (£169.99) Nexus is the biggest hardware rollout in the British company's history, with tens of thousands of units shipped worldwide. While many buyers got right into playing their consoles without a hitch, the volume of broken units quickly overshadowed the launch week. Having your screen detach itself from the chassis is a tough way to start a retro gaming session, even if it does give you an unexpected peek at the internals.

A trip to the factory floor

In the November 5 statement, Byatt apologized directly to owners dealing with defective units. To figure out what went wrong on the assembly line, Byatt is flying out to the manufacturing facility next week alongside Blaze's Heads of Design and Development to review quality checks directly with the factory team.

"Some of you have received a Nexus with a fault," Byatt wrote. "I'm sorry, and I know how frustrating that is when you've been looking forward to playing it."

For collectors who bought one of the sold-out Limited Edition Nexus consoles (such as the 3,000-unit DOOM Edition) through retail partner Funstock, Blaze confirmed it has held back dedicated replacement stock so defective limited units won't just be refunded.

Why the Nexus is a bigger deal for Blaze

The stumbling block comes at a moment when Blaze is pushing its physical cartridge ecosystem into much more demanding territory. Since launching the original 4.3-inch Evercade handheld in May 2020, the company has built a catalog of over 80 cartridges and more than 700 officially licensed games across the home-based Evercade VS (2021), the portable Evercade EXP (2022), and the bartop Evercade Alpha (2024).

The Nexus is the company's jump into 32-bit and 64-bit hardware. It upgrades the portable line with a 5.89-inch IPS display, dual analog sticks, a 5,000mAh battery, Wi-Fi 6, and a local wireless multiplayer system called EverSync that lets two systems share a single game. It also arrived with two heavy-hitting software packages: id Software's The DOOM Collection and a pack-in Banjo-Kazooie Double Pack cartridge that puts Rare's 1998 Nintendo 64 platformer and its 2000 sequel, Banjo-Tooie, onto a physical handheld cart.

The 5.89-inch screen wants out

A $200 price tag brings steeper expectations than Blaze's earlier budget handhelds, and a screen that refuses to stay glued to the front housing is hard to ignore. It's good that Blaze held back replacement stock for the Funstock limited editions, because telling a collector their numbered console can only be swapped for a standard retail box would have gone over like a lead balloon.

What I want to know is whether the cartridge reading failures are tied to the physical connector tolerances inside the Nexus slot or something that can be patched in firmware. Adhesive failures and bad D-pads are straightforward factory fixes once leadership gets on site, and getting the manufacturing line sorted out quickly will be essential if the Nexus is going to carry the Evercade library through its 64-bit era.