Nintendo releases official statement on Joy-Con Drift issue

6 years ago Justin 2 Comments

After the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Drift class action lawsuit filed last week, Nintendo has released a short statement regarding the issue.

Speaking to The Verge as part of an article on the Joy-Con Drift matter, Nintendo acknowledged that there have been ‘recent reports’ of ‘some Joy-Con controllers’ experiencing issues with responsiveness. The statement then goes on to suggest anyone with issues to visit Nintendo’s support website for help.

Here’s the full direct statement from Nintendo provided to The Verge:

At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help.

Nintendo’s official support website has notably been recently updated to highlight the Joy-Con control sticks troubleshooting page and added a Joy-Con repair setup shortcut to the top of the front page.

While it’s great that the company is encouraging consumers to contact customer support, presumably for repair service, the issue remains that Nintendo reportedly charges a hefty repair fee to do so if the controller is out of warranty. Notably, a Joy-Con’s warranty is only 90 days long in North America if purchased as a separate accessory.

We’re hoping that this official acknowledgement is a sign that we may see policy changed to have repair fees waived for this particular issue given how widespread it is.

Even if Nintendo does begin to offer free repairs out of warranty though, the issue needs to be fixed for future controllers as nobody wants to be stuck in an endless cycle of sending their Joy-Cons back to Nintendo again if the issue resurfaces.

And that’s not to mention the other potential problems ahead if the control sticks on the upcoming Nintendo Switch Lite feature the same drifting issue leading to the entire console being sent back for repair. Hopefully that’s not the case!

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