Official Nintendo Joy-Con Lawsuit Response Leaves A Lot To Be Desired

Joy-Con drift is something that's been causing quite a stir lately. A number of users have been reporting that the joysticks on their Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons have started to drift, registering movement when there is none. This has been an ongoing problem since the Switch launched, and thus far, it doesn't seem that Nintendo has implemented a long-term fix for the issue.

With silence from Nintendo on the matter, frustrated Switch owners decided to take things a step further, filing a class action lawsuit against the company. One of the main complaints in that lawsuit is that Nintendo hasn't made consumers aware of the defect, and routinely fails to repair the issue without charge.

Either Nintendo has decided that the criticism has reached a tipping point or that lawsuit spurred it to action, because now it's responded to these complaints of Joy-Con drift. Speaking to Kotaku, a representative for the company gave a rather by-the-books 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.

Nintendo doesn't say anything about potentially offering free repairs for the issue, nor did it respond when Kotaku asked if it was planning to implement a fix in the future. However, Kotaku does point out that the Nintendo Support Site has been updated to show shortcuts for Joy-Con issues, making it easier for consumers to jump start the repair process.

That's better than nothing, but Nintendo's response doesn't really inspire much hope that this problem of Joy-Con drifting will be sorted out quickly. I've been fortunate enough to not experience drifting problems in either of my two pairs of Joy-Cons, but you don't have to search the internet very hard to find instances of people who weren't so lucky. At $80 for a pair, Joy-Cons aren't exactly an inexpensive item either, so it's easy to see why affected players are frustrated with Nintendo.

Here's hoping that it isn't long before Nintendo offers a more substantial response to these issues. It'd be great to see the company offer free repairs for out-of-warranty Joy-Cons, but its statement to Kotaku doesn't really suggest that such a repair program is in the works. We'll see where the issue goes from here, so stay tuned.