Nintendo has committed to repairing all Nintendo Switch Joy-Con suffering from the common flaw branded as ‘Joy-Con drift’ within the UK, European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland. In a major win for consumers, these repairs will be free and will be available regardless of how old the controller is and its warranty status.
This has been a policy within Nintendo for some time – internal documents leaked in 2019, and there’s plenty reports of people being able to get free repairs (or more likely free refurbished replacements) for the last few years –but a new page on the Nintendo Support site shows the Japanese console manufacturer making this a formal policy.
“Until further notice, Nintendo will not charge you in the European Economic Area (EEA), UK and Switzerland for the repair of the responsiveness syndrome irrespective of whether this is caused by a defect or by wear and tear,” the site states.
However, there are a handful of exceptions, such as if the issue has been caused by “accidental damage or negligence” or if you’ve opened up the controller yourself to try and fix or replace the stick. Home repairs have been particularly common thanks to cheap aftermarket Joy-Con suitable analogue sticks, and tricks to work around the failure-prone stick modules with squares of cardboard.
The Nintendo Switch came out in March 2017, and it almost immediately became clear that there were problems with the design of the Joy-Con controllers. Initially this was largely put down to wireless connectivity issues, with Nintendo revising the internals to improve the Bluetooth antennas, but it wasn’t long before ‘Joy-Con drift’ was a well-known problem, with directional inputs registering on controllers that were untouched. This naturally led to…. lawsuits! Nintendo was sued in 2019, and Which? in the UK urged the company to investigate the issue further.
The thing is that Joy-Con drift is basically inevitable, with the internal mechanisms smaller than that of a DualSense of Xbox controller, requiring a physical contact to measure electrical resistance, and this being prone to dust and wear. In the last few months we’ve seen alternatives offered, with the Nyxi Wizard controllers featuring Hall Effect Joysticks that use magnetic fields, and GuliKit making drop-in Hall Effect replacements for the Joy-Con sticks. Nintendo can replace Joy-Con sticks, but they won’t be more resilient to the same defect.
Source: Nintendo, via NintendoLife
