Recently, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa held a meeting with investors and financial professionals in which he answered questions regarding the company’s current situation and plans. During the session, Furukawa was asked to address the ongoing issue of “JoyCon drift,” an error regarding Switch controllers, which many gamers have experienced since the console’s initial release.
“JoyCon drift” refers to a phenomenon in which the Nintendo Switch’s two controllers, called JoyCons, will sometimes register movement even though the player is not touching the analog stick or any buttons. This will cause input to register within the game currently being played — characters will continue to move, the text will continue to scroll, and attacks and other commands will be executed without the player’s control.
This issue can be a quite frustrating one – a player can take a quick break only to find their character plummeting off a ledge to their death. Plus, many JoyCons have reportedly developed this issue exceptionally quickly after being purchased, requiring almost immediate replacement.
Videos and guides quickly popped up, discussing DIY methods for fixing the drift, but fans were far from satisfied. In July 2019, a class action lawsuit was leveled against Nintendo in the United States, citing JoyCon drift as the reason. In 2020, the Switch Lite console was also added to the lawsuit, with its permanently attached JoyCons reported not to have solved the issue. The case is still ongoing and is anticipated to enter arbitration soon.
Nintendo has begun providing free repair for drifting JoyCons. This is rumored to be a direct response to the class action lawsuit.
When asked about the issue, Furukawa openly apologized, stating that Nintendo was continually striving to improve all of their products. However, beyond this apology, he was unwilling to make any definitive statements regarding JoyCons or the drift problem.
Furukawa’s official statement was as follows: “As the Joy-Con is the subject of a class-action lawsuit in the United States and this is still a pending issue, we would it like to refrain from responding about any specific actions.”
It is possible that Nintendo will make additional statements as the case proceeds.
Have you had issues with your JoyCons? Let us know!
