The UK’s consumer watchdog Who? has concluded that the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers that are infamous for drifting are “likely due to a mechanical fault – pointing to design flaws and suggesting that the video game giant should act urgently to fix the problem and more proactively help affected consumers.” The team at Which acquired five sets of faulty Joy-Con controllers from consumers, plus their Nintendo Switch consoles, and then sent them to a specialist lab for disassembly analysis. The lab reported that the Joy-Cons did suffer from drift and it usually affected the left stick. Here are their findings:
“Although there were dust covers on the Joy-Cons joystick components, the presence of dust and other contaminants in the internal components suggested that this protection was insufficient.
All the plastic circuit boards showed visible wear at the contact points of the joystick sliders, despite only being used for months.
It was concluded that this wear and the resulting drift problem was probably caused by a mechanical problem.
The laboratory report states: ‘Although there are differences between the construction of individual controllers, common features observed are wear of the joystick slider contact points (present on all plastic circuit boards) and dust/contamination ingress.
‘It may therefore be the case that the drift problem is caused by PCB wear or a combination of this wear together with dust/contamination.’