Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons Had More Troubles Than We Knew

Among all the popular gaming consoles, Nintendo Switch has the most unusual ones – Joy-Cons. At the same time, alas, they are the least reliable and the most prone to hardware issues. The most common of them is the “Joy-Con drift”, but along with this widely discussed issue, there are many that don’t get that much attention.

If you are a Nintendo fan, you probably know a lot about the Joy-Con drift that has even made it to the first paragraph of its Wikipedia page. The controllers with this issue falsely recognized inputs which made games unplayable with them. But, while in the public opinion it was a rather rare issue, the real scale of it has been much more disastrous.

It was revealed in an interview given (anonymously) to Kotaku by a former supervisor for an authorized repair facility. As this person said, the number of defective controllers could easily reach thousands each week. And it’s in the US only. While in the beginning, Nintendo was able to replace the drifty controllers with new ones, later it possibly started running out of extra Joy-Cons. So, the facility had to actually repair the ones users had brought. Once it even started requiring a new workplace dedicated exclusively to Joy-Con repair.

Since that moment, the manufacturer received enough feedback to be able to improve the hardware. So now these reports are getting rare (though hardly will they cease any time soon). As a Nintendo spokesperson puts it, there will always be mechanical issues where mechanical movement is involved. Hardly can it console you when you have to repair or replace your JoyCon and defer the conclusion of your favorite game. But at least, they don’t pretend there’s no issue at all.

Have you ever encountered the Joy-Con drift? Was it easy for you to get it repaired or replaced? If you have a story of your own, would you please share it in the comments?