Soon after the launch of the Nintendo Switch in March 2017, consumers began complaining about issues with their Joy-Con controllers. The specific issue was that of drift in the analog stick in the left Joy-Con, which has now spawned a class action lawsuit more than two years later. Nintendo has not given a statement directly on the lawsuit yet, but they did give a sort of non-answer quote about the issue itself.
After the class action lawsuit was filed, Kotaku contacted Nintendo about the issue, in which they gave the following response.
“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.”
This response is certainly frustrating for Nintendo Switch owners that have had these issues, with some popping up right after launch and others not until more recently. Even new Nintendo Switch consoles have had people report issues as well, so it’s been an ongoing problem.
Nintendo mentions contacting support, but doesn’t mention anything about an extended warranty for repairs. That is something that Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death issue, so we’ll have to see if Nintendo does something similar moving forward.
The initial warranty for the system is only for a year though, so at this point you’ll have to pay to get your Joy-Con repaired if it’s older than a year.
