A new update Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite‘s Joy-Cons could prove to be huge for players. Since the Switch released in 2017, it’s been almost universally praised. However, it’s also had one substantial issue since launch, and that’s Joy-Con drifting. Issues of stick-drift aren’t exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. The PS4 and Xbox One controllers have also been plagued with this mechanical failure, and the PS5 and Xbox Series X controllers are also unlikely to escape the largely inevitable problem. However, while stick-drift has been a problem for every hardware manufacture in gaming, it’s much worse on Switch than other platforms. Not only do issues seemingly arise much quicker, but are far more severe as well.
So far, Nintendo has had to pay for this issue with several different lawsuits, many of which are still ongoing. And over in Europe, these lawsuits are heating up. A coalition of nine different European consumer rights groups has formed and is launching an investigation into the issue.
As VGC notes, this week the Dutch Consumers Association announced it’s coming together with other consumer rights groups across Italy, France, and more to monitor the situation. And according to these various groups, Switch owners have been relaying issues with the Joy-Con controllers en masse.
“We are making the call because we are getting signals that the Switch will not last as long as consumers might expect,” said Sandra Molenaar, director of the aforementioned association. I”n addition, options for repairing the console are limited, forcing consumers to make expensive replacements. We use the responses to determine what further action to take.”
The Dutch Consumers Association noteds that if a solution doesn’t arise, it’s ready to take the matter to court with other consumer rights groups by its side.
In the United States, Nintendo has been on the wrong end of several class-action lawsuits, however, so far none of this has resulted in any improvements. The company has started to issue refunds for faulty controllers rather than fix them, but this has been the extent of its response to all of the lawsuits. However, the situation is now escalating in Europe, and soon it’s going to be hard for it to largely ignore the matter as it has been.
Nintendo has noted in the past it can’t comment on the topic very much because of all the lawsuits involved, but it has suggested that it’s a non-issue, which naturally angered many owners of the otherwise problem-free piece of hardware.
