While a potential lawsuit brews in the background, Nintendo appears to have taken notice of the recent spike in Joy-Con drift issues. After last week's public reveal of CSK&D investigating potential legal action against the gaming giant, Nintendo has released an official statement on the matter, acknowledging the problem, though not addressing it. When contacted by multiple news outlets, Nintendo responded with the following:

At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help.

The company's support page has also been slightly edited, adding a direct link for consumers that are having issues with their Joy-Cons not functioning or responding correctly. It's also now easier to begin the process of sending in your Joy-Cons to be repaired by Nintendo, though this is only in effect for the United States and Canada, currently. Despite Nintendo's answer being vague and ignoring the fact that the Joy-Con drift issues could entirely be their fault, the threat of legal action does seem to have at least caused some effect for the time being.

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[samcambolt270]

uh... Im sorry recent reports? If by "recent" you mean reports that have been happening for nigh on 2 years at this point which you have ignored to the point that theres a lawsuit happening, then you'd be correct, nintendo.

 

[GBADWB]

I see, I didn't realize the calibration also included deadzone adjustment. My bad.

Yeah that's one of the thing Nintendo has for older systems. e.g for the gamecube controllers, X+Y+Start recalibrated the controller(to fix the start of stick and deadzone adjustment). The hardest wall in this problem is drift is random making it a tough problem to fix overall. Deadzone size fix would work in my case, where my drift is light up direction. But anyone getting full direction inputs is out of luck on that one.

 

[gamesquest1]

considering some people are claiming to have had 4 pairs all develop drift yet others have never had an issue, i would have to assume there is another element involved in the rapid deterioration some people experience, possibly some people more prone to getting "bits"/ grime into their controller, possibly something to do with humidity levels where people live or maybe just play styles with how people use their controller

all that said, its still a common enough fault for it to warrant some sort of free repair service and a redesign of the mechanism

PS, i have a bag full of controllers with the drifting issue, another very common fault is the LB,RB micro switch completely snapping off the board, on the left controllers it isn't too bad as the button is on a separate flex cable, but on the right controller the button is on the motherboard and pretty much any time it gets broken it lifts all the traces so your stuck doing some rewiring to test pads

 

[Reecey]

I’ve heard it only seems to be an issue with the coloured joy cons the grey “now very rare and expensive” don’t seem to be an issue. Has anyone else noticed you cannot seem to buy them anymore? very rarely.

 

[gamesquest1]

I’ve heard it only seems to be an issue with the coloured joy cons the grey “now very rare and expensive” don’t seem to be an issue.

my bag of all types of joy cons with drift would like to disagree

 

[samcambolt270]

I’ve heard it only seems to be an issue with the coloured joy cons the grey “now very rare and expensive” don’t seem to be an issue.

This definitely isn't the case. I have grey joycons, and they began drifting only a month after I got the switch.

 

[DSoryu]

considering some people are claiming to have had 4 pairs all develop drift yet others have never had an issue, i would have to assume there is another element involved in the rapid deterioration some people experience, possibly some people more prone to getting "bits"/ grime into their controller, possibly something to do with humidity levels where people live or maybe just play styles with how people use their controller

all that said, its still a common enough fault for it to warrant some sort of free repair service and a redesign of the mechanism

PS, i have a bag full of controllers with the drifting issue, another very common fault is the LB,RB micro switch completely snapping off the board, on the left controllers it isn't too bad as the button is on a separate flex cable, but on the right controller the button is on the motherboard and pretty much any time it gets broken it lifts all the traces so your stuck doing some rewiring to test pads

I'll go with the humidity levels, as the problem resides in the graphite print on the joycon chip foil. In my case, when I opened the faulty one out of curiosity (it was going to end in the trashcan anyway) the scratch was so harsh that it nearly teared apart the chip foil, and by my experience in electronics, that only can happen when an external factor is added, like humidity like you said.

 

[Reecey]

my bag of all types of joy cons with drift would like to disagree

Well I will tell you... I will tell you I will!! My grey joy cons, two sets at that don’t seem to be a problem so mine will disagree with yours! maybe a joy con fight would sort this out!

 

[DuoForce]

To be fair they would most likely need to re-engineer the whole joystick to fix this issue which does take time and money

But they also should be a lot more transparent about things. It's not like this is an issue with only a small number of people and the fix is to recall specific batches of joy cons

I'm not defending them of course. They can be handling this a lot better. But things do take time

They shouldn’t be selling us broken products. Period. Nintendo should replace the joy cons. This is just fucking stupid

 

[samcambolt270]

I'll go with the humidity levels, as the problem resides in the graphite print on the joycon chip foil. In my case, when I opened the faulty one out of curiosity (it was going to end in the trashcan anyway) the scratch was so harsh that it nearly teared apart the chip foil, and by my experience in electronics, that only can happen when an external factor is added, like humidity like you said.

This may be actually be a factor. We do tend to have a rather high humidity here, so if that were the case, it may explain why mine began so quickly. It doesn't, however, explain why only my right joycon is drifting.

 

[gamesquest1]

Well I will tell you... I will tell you I will!! My grey joy cons, two sets at that don’t seem to be a problem so mine will disagree with yours! maybe a joy con fight would sort this out!

bring it, I have an army of battle hardened joycons

Spoiler

 

[DSoryu]

This may be actually be a factor. We do tend to have a rather high humidity here, so if that were the case, it may explain why mine began so quickly. It doesn't, however, explain why only my right joycon is drifting.

In my case it was the right one as well, I mainly blame Splatoon and Breath of the wild, as those games require intensive use of the secondary stick for the camera view, mainly splatoon, when the camera needs to be tilted and not just moved.

 

[Deleted User]

They shouldn’t be selling us broken products. Period. Nintendo should replace the joy cons. This is just fucking stupid

They aren't selling a broken product. There's a difference between broken and defective. This is the latter of the two

I agree they shouldn't be selling something that's defective. But the only other option besides heavily discounting the price of the current joycons until a new one is made. Would be to pull them all from the shelves via a recall and not sell any at all until new ones are made. Which is a much much larger problem

 

[Reecey]

This definitely isn't the case. I have grey joycons, and they began drifting only a month after I got the switch.

You should put them on a leash then, if they keep drifting once a month!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

bring it, I have an army of battle hardened joycons

Spoiler

Oh my! That’s a lot of joy cons I think I will miss this one thanks I forfeit the fight!

Edit: A serious question for you @gamesquest1 are all those joy cons broke in the picture or are they ok are you selling them?

 

[gamesquest1]

You should put them on a leash then, if they keep drifting once a month!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


Oh my! That’s a lot of joy cons I think I will miss this one thanks I forfeit the fight!

haha! fooled you, they are all really bad a aiming anyway, but I do have 40 replacement analogue sticks to get installed

You should put them on a leash then, if they keep drifting once a month!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


Oh my! That’s a lot of joy cons I think I will miss this one thanks I forfeit the fight!

Edit: A serious question for you @gamesquest1 are all those joy cons broke in the picture or are they ok are you selling them?

on a serious note, they are indeed all broke, but i have a bunch of new analogue sticks to put in them

 

[Reecey]

haha! fooled you, they are all really bad a aiming anyway, but I do have 40 replacement analogue sticks to get installed

on a serious note, they are indeed all broke, but i have a bunch of new analogue sticks to put in them

That’s a shame I was wandering if you were selling any?

 

[Jacklack3]

I don't know how but my calibration menu is broken now. I can't use any joycon (even the non broken right one). It just doesn't respond. If I play around with the joystick it responds but then is off by a lot. Restarting the switch doesn't help either.

They should add a thing to the calibration to just not touch the joystick after each movement. To see what the deadzone is on your drifting joystick.

 

[DANTENDO]

I think this drifting bolox is pure fantasy and the ones experiencing it are on something

 

[samcambolt270]

I think this drifting bolox is pure fantasy and the ones experiencing it are on something

Pretty much anyone here could easily provide you footage of the camera moving without the stick being touched if you'd like. Just because you haven't experienced a problem does not mean the hundreds upon hundreds who aren't you are lying.

 

[Windaga]

I have 3 sets of Joy Con - one launch grey set, a Smash set, and Red/Blue Set.

They all drift :/. The grey set's drift is significant - I have a hard time selecting the icons on my home screen and, between the horrible load times and the general clunkiness, I can't use the eShop at all when they're on. The Smash set's left Joy Con has a good amount of drag - enough to rotate Link every few steps in BoTW, while the Blue Joy Con from the colored set has a small, yet noticeable amount of drag.

All of my Joy Con are put in cases after use (or left attached to the Switch.) I don't even use them very much - I've had 2 Pro Controller's since launch.