Nintendo Switch: A study reveals the reason for the Joy-Con Drift, controllers biggest fault

After five years of marketing the Nintendo Switch, the Japanese manufacturer still hasn’t resolved one of the biggest problems with its console’s controllers: Joy-Con Drift. With the repair shops overwhelmed, Nintendo somehow tried to fix the problem, but without success.

As a reminder, since the release of Switch, many players have been Joy-Con Drift has an issue that causes joysticks to randomly send a fake signal. As a result, your character can move on his own in a game and therefore it is difficult to fully control his movements.

The cause of Joy-Con slipping would have been determined

In June of this year, Which? (British consumer association) already ” Two out of five Switch Classic owners surveyed experienced Joy-Con slippage The group tested “five reported drift controllers” and discovered what they believed to be “”. Mechanical problem at root of drift in UK best-selling video game console “.

As Eurogamer reports, A new report from Which? even after just a few months of use, Joy-Con plastic circuit boards show significant wear on the controller’s analog stick contacts. In addition to this wear, internal components of console and controller fill with dust, dirt, and debris Despite Nintendo’s efforts to make them dustproof.

Which one requested an investigation as early as last year? The consumer group that conducted the study now asked Nintendo to solve the problem it identified through its analysis. The manufacturer has always claimed that this is not a “real problem”., but the latter still affects thousands of players worldwide. Given the high number of repairs Nintendo has already made to controllers, it seems It is unthinkable that the manufacturer would not reach the same conclusions as the consumer association.

Fortunately, relatively soon after initial reports, Nintendo allowed customers to send their Joy-Con controllers in for repair for free. However, this solution causes users to find themselves without a controller for weeks, which is not always ideal. Which one? now he believes it Nintendo must offer a compensation or reimbursement planand claims that repairing or replacing all Joy-Cons should be free.

Nintendo responds by minimizing the problem

In response to this investigation, Nintendo released the following statement: The percentage of Joy-Con controllers that have been reported to have analog stick issues in the past is small, and we’ve made continuous improvements to the Joy-Con analog stick since its launch in 2017. “.

Nintendo was indeed working on new controllers to solve the Joy-Con Drift, but when the OLED model was released, the brand finally admitted that the problem was still unsolved. Again, Nintendo assures that the components of its joysticks have been continuously improved since the release of its consolebut clearly not enough to tackle the problem.

The company adds: We expect all our hardware to perform as intended and we always encourage consumers to contact Nintendo Customer Service if anything fails to meet that expectation; – Controllers, including where the warranty may no longer be valid “.

Although no significant development is expected until the end of the year, console manufacturers are well aware of the problem. For example, Sony continued to make design changes aimed at preventing stick drag on the DualSense controller, which is also affected by drag.