Experts want response from Nintendo

The Nintendo Switch is still incredibly popular among gamers, but for years it has been plagued by an annoying problem: the dreaded JoyCon drift. A lab did an analysis and found a probable cause.

Nintendo Switch: Laboratory investigates JoyCon drift

Especially with the classic version of the switch, players complain about chronic Controller drift issues. In case you haven’t heard about it, while drifting, the cursor moves on the screen even though the user doesn’t touch the stick or barely touches it. In extreme cases, this can result in titles being unplayable until an expensive replacement is purchased. But why is this actually happening?

The answer comes from Which?, a company dedicated to reviewing companies and services. Controllers are commodities that are not always treated well and are often touched with dirty fingers – and that’s not all dust and other dirt particles, that become established over time. And right here is probably the problem of the JoyCons.

Nintendo controllers suffer from dust and dirt

Although the controllers are provided with dust protection caps, a teardown test in the laboratory shows that these are apparently not sufficient. Paired with Signs of wear at the contact points this causes the resulting drift problem.

The lab report states: “While there are differences in the construction of each controller, the commonalities noted are wear at the contact points of the joystick sliders (present on all plastic boards) and dust/contaminant ingress” (source: Which?).

Which? five JoyCon sets from consumers backed up that had the drift problem. Accordingly, the results are instructive. Whether the problem for thousands of gamers around the world always has this reason cannot be deduced from the small sample.

Although the switch hardly competes with the PS5 and the Xbox Series X | S, who wins in terms of popularity?

Nintendo doesn’t see a big problem in the JoyCon drift

After Nintendo received the results, the company issued a statement. The percentage of problems reported in the past is low, and the JoyCon analog sticks have been since their introduction in 2017 continuously improved been. Should hardware not function as it should, “we always encourage consumers to contact Nintendo Customer Service, who stands ready to resolve any consumer issue related to the Joy-Con controller analog sticks in an open and accommodating manner.” , even in cases where the guarantee may no longer apply,” says Nintendo – after all.

However, the problem cannot be quite as rare as Nintendo portrays it in the statement. After all, the Japanese gaming group sometimes even overstretched repair companies.