The French magazine 60 Millions Consumers (60 Millions de Consommateurs) pushes out a ‘Worst Of’ company and product guide. They offer out cute little awards in the forms of cacti, each going to the worst products. Nintendo has won a cactus themselves in their first-ever nomination to the name-and-shame competition, receiving the ‘Too Fragile’ award.
The award is explained as given due to the joystick drift that has plagued the Nintendo Switch since launch, that Nintendo themselves still haven’t offered an overall solution to. As recent as July in 2019, Nintendo executives no longer charged consumers for sending in their controllers (named Joy-Con’s) for repair, and also not needing proof of purchase for the repairs.
It’s a capitulation that ultimately came too late for many consumers to find their frustrations stymied, but should have been an adequate solution until Nintendo could come up with a permanent solution at the design level.
It wasn’t and they didn’t.
The Nintendo Switch Lite came out (to tremendous success, mind you), and the Joy-Con Drifting reared its ugly head once again with the newest console. Ultimately, it led to an FCC filing for a class-action suit against Nintendo by consumers who were tired of replicating Tokyo Drift across Nintendo’s ever-growing library of games on both of the new consoles; The Nintendo Switch Lite was added to the ongoing suit.
This is the spring I'm talking about. Even tiny movements inside the housing can cause tiny drifting issues. Therefore the backplate now fixes the spring in the center. pic.twitter.com/8Z5iq0VhDg
— Gordon (@GoodonSwitch) September 28, 2019
Certain entities on YouTube have posted videos of them tearing down both the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons, and the Nintendo Switch Lite Joy-Cons, and they look near identical besides a small metal casing featured in the Nintendo Switch Lite. To some, it doesn’t appear as though Nintendo put any effort into the Joy-Con Drifting issue that’s caused them a colossal headache in their first release. Newer tear-down videos have been posted explaining the attempt to keep the Joy-Con spring in place, although some are disinclined to care at this point.
Being that the Joy-Cons cannot be removed from the Nintendo Switch Lite, consumers must send their entire console to Nintendo for drift repairs, often taking weeks until they see their console again.
Despite this entire fiasco, Nintendo is surprisingly still doing well; better than they’ve done since the Wii. Consoles and titles alike are selling faster than some retailers can keep up with the demand, and Nintendo’s stock has almost tripled in the past five years alone. For those that can’t reliably play the new assortment of games on the hybrid console, it’s doubtful they care about anything other than being able to enjoy it.
It’s worth noting that not all consoles are reporting this issue. Many have had their consoles since launch, and play them daily, with no untoward issues cropping up regarding the Joy-Con Drift.
