Anyone who owns a Nintendo Switch will know about Joy-Con stick drift. It’s when the Joy-Con Control Sticks stop responding correctly, or suffer from "drifting."
Complaints about Joy-Con drift were so loud that Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized for the "inconvenience" and launched a free repair program. Nintendo of America boss Doug Bowser has talked about the "battle against" Joy-Con drift, insisting Nintendo was making continuous improvements. It was such a big problem that parents in the U.S. tried to sue over Joy-Con drift in a class-action lawsuit, although Nintendo ended up fending that off.
In 2022, a UK consumer group alleged Nintendo Switch's Joy-Con drift issue was caused by a fundamental design flaw. A report from Which claimed that, even after just a few months of use, the Joy-Con's plastic circuit boards show significant wear on the joystick slider contact points, causing Joy-Con drift.
This week, Nintendo fully unveiled the Switch 2 in a Nintendo Direct, showing off the new Joy-Con 2 and its extra functionality. In Nintendo Switch 2 tech specs published by the company, there is no detail on the sticks themselves. So as of now, we don’t know for sure if Joy-Con 2 use the hall effect sensors Nintendo fans are desperate for.
As Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto described in a new 'Ask the Developer' interview, the Switch 2's Joy-Cons have “larger and more durable” analog sticks “with smoother movement.”
It was a similarly vague response when Nintendo was asked about Joy-Con drift improvements at a hardware-focused roundtable Q&A in New York yesterday, attended by IGN.
Tetsuya Sasaki, General Manager at Nintendo’s Technology Development Division, and Senior Director at its Technology Development Department, told the assembled media that the new Joy-Con 2 controllers were redesigned “from the ground up,” but failed to say anything specific about drifting.
“As you may have witnessed and felt, the new Joy-Con 2 controllers for the Nintendo Switch 2 have been really designed from the ground up, from scratch, and they've been designed to have bigger movement and also smoother movement,” Sasaki said.
In the 'Ask the Developer' interview, Kawamoto talked about the new Switch 2 Pro Controller and its sticks, saying they’re "quieter."
“Aside from the color, the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller may look indistinguishable from the previous controller at first glance, but it was also redesigned from scratch,” Kawamoto explained.
“In particular, the left and right control sticks are quieter and don’t make noise, even when they’re moved quickly to the edge. Also, they glide very smoothly, so we've taken to calling them ‘smooth-gliding sticks.’ (Laughs)”
Sasaki added: "As they’re calling them ‘smooth-gliding sticks,’ we made efforts to reduce the feeling of bumping when you tilt them. In fact, there's been a long-running project at Nintendo with the grand ambition of developing the ‘pinnacle of all controllers,’ and we’ve been researching it hard for a long time now.”
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course. We won’t know how the Switch 2 Joy-Con hold up under strain perhaps until years after the console comes out. But hopefully, based on what Nintendo is saying now, Joy-Con drift will be a thing of the past.
For more, check out everything announced at the Switch 2 Nintendo Direct, and what the experts have to say about the Switch 2 price and Mario Kart World’s $80 price tag.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
