The Last Joy-Con Drift Lawsuits Have Been Dismissed

[vanguard333]

To quote the YouTuber Arlo, "The joy-con war is over. We lost."

Apparently, there have been at least three lawsuits against Nintendo over joy-con drift, one of which was dismissed a couple years ago. Recently, the remaining two lawsuits were also dismissed.

The Switch was a great console, but the joy-con drift is perhaps Nintendo's lowest point in terms of hardware quality, and now they've pretty much been told that they don't have to improve. Anyone else remember when Nintendo made a console so durable that it would work perfectly after being hit with a sledgehammer? 

[lenticular]

Huh. I didn't even know there were lawsuits over this. I don't think that "Nintendo can get away with whatever they want" is the right lesson to take away from this, though. A better one is probably "you do all know that you can just not buy stuff that Nintendo makes, right?" If Nintendo continues to make shoddy hardware then they'll get a reputation for it and people will just stop buying their stuff.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

25 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Huh. I didn't even know there were lawsuits over this. I don't think that "Nintendo can get away with whatever they want" is the right lesson to take away from this, though. A better one is probably "you do all know that you can just not buy stuff that Nintendo makes, right?" If Nintendo continues to make shoddy hardware then they'll get a reputation for it and people will just stop buying their stuff.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't the consequences of my own actions."

To Nintendo's ever-so-slight credit, they did de-drift my second pair of Joycons for me. Just had to send them away for four-to-six weeks. I had the originals still, so it wasn't the end of handheld mode.

Anyway, this is one area where I genuinely wonder: could a third-party developer actually beat Nintendo at the controller game? Has, say, Hori made a "drift-free Joycon"? Presumably at a lower price than the absurd $50 apiece Uncle Nintendo is asking?

...Eh, maybe. Cheaper yes, drift free no idea. For my part, I've bought enough controllers. If you need me, I'll be off playing F-Zero 99 with my original GameCube controller.

[Integrity]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

I don't think that "Nintendo can get away with whatever they want" is the right lesson to take away from this, though.

how isn't it, honestly? i understand the personal decision to just not give nintendo cash, as i'm doing now, but literally millions of people have shown, repeatedly, that they will accept any practice nintendo ships out and will continue to give them money. i'm deeply cynical about people stopping giving them money over this, and when the switch 2 has its own weird issue, i don't think there's any hope that people will stop throwing money at nintendo over the n128 or whatever follows it. like, fuck, a dude on the discord today expressed a hope that a disabled 4k option in the ttyd remake code meant that there might be a next-gen release of it that they'd provide gratis to people who bought it for the switch 1. that's the level of dude we're talking about.

people, in a huge way, have this massive blind spot for nintendo's practices. it's completely unironically the <thing> [angry soyjak] <thing:nintendo> [pogging soyjak] meme in real time all the time. it's really frustrating.

Edited May 23 by Integrity

[Armchair General]

Well, it was bound to happen, eventually. To make it so funny, all they had to do is use the same setup with the PS2 thumbsticks: An hemisphere setting on top of an stick.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I think a lot about kids getting a cool new Nintendo game for Christmas and their experience is compromised by their malfunctioning hardware. Send it in to Nintendo sure, but now they're spending their winter break without any Switch game time, let alone their cool new game. Replacement controllers are an essential accessory for this system. And what if it's the Nintendo Switch Lite, where the controllers are not detachable? You're sending in the whole damn unit for repair. Replacement Joycons cost more than a full priced game, and no you can't just buy one, they're only available as a set.

I was a Nintendo Baby growing up and did not have any issue this bad. Not even with Mario Party 1. We shredded on those N64 control sticks, but the worst that would happen is compromising the range and accuracy of motion - stick drift was not a thing back then, even when a poor quality stick would slack to the side when not being pushed. Playing Mario 64 on the worst condition N64 control stick is more tolerable than Mario Odyssey on a slightly drifting left or right joycon.

What bugs me though is Nintendo's lack of acknowledgement in their game design. Metroid Dread, Princess Peach Showtime, and Links Awakening Remake are all examples of games that you'd imagine yourself playing with a D-pad and yet there is no D-Pad support at all. They only accept Control stick inputs for movement. 

One refrain I hear a lot is that "all modern controllers drift" so it's not a big deal. And maybe that's true? I had a PS4 controller drifting on me once, but I took the advice of google and just rotated the stick repeatedly for ten seconds and it solved the issue immediately. The Joy Con issue is something entirely different on a technical level

[lenticular]

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

people, in a huge way, have this massive blind spot for nintendo's practices.

It's true, they do. But that sort of thing typically doesn't last forever. These companies that are fan darlings are completely teflon right up until they're not. For the longest time, people had a very similar blind spot for Blizzard and would excuse pretty much anything they did. But then the dam burst, and do you guys not have phones and Blitzchung and Warcraft 3 Reforged and Overwatch 2 and sexual harassment and now pretty much everyone hates them. People still buy their stuff, sure, but it's much more grudgingly now, which makes their position much more precarious. Wizards of the Coast are another one who thought that their fanbase's patience was infinite but has recently discovered that it wasn't. Heck, I'll even add Atari in the early 1980s to the list. Consumers don't turn on their favourite companies overnight, but they do turn on them.

I dunno. Maybe I'm being too naive and optimistic here, but I do genuinely believe that there is a limit to how much bullshit companies can get away with. And I also think that if the lesson that we take away from joycon drift is "hmmm, maybe I should think twice next time I'm considering buying something from Nintendo" rather than "welp, Nintendo is untouchable" then that's more likely to help push us ever so slightly towards where we want to go. The journey of a thousand li starts beneath our collective feet.

[Dark Holy Elf]

12 hours ago, lenticular said:

Huh. I didn't even know there were lawsuits over this. I don't think that "Nintendo can get away with whatever they want" is the right lesson to take away from this, though. A better one is probably "you do all know that you can just not buy stuff that Nintendo makes, right?" If Nintendo continues to make shoddy hardware then they'll get a reputation for it and people will just stop buying their stuff.

The issue, I think, is that Nintendo has a captive audience for their games. People will put up with shoddy hardware to play the next Fire Emblem game (or Mario, or Zelda, or Metroid, or Pokemon, etc.). It's possible for a third-party controller maker to get in on things, and I certainly have some of those too, but most of them have some issues of their own.

[lenticular]

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

The issue, I think, is that Nintendo has a captive audience for their games. People will put up with shoddy hardware to play the next Fire Emblem game (or Mario, or Zelda, or Metroid, or Pokemon, etc.). It's possible for a third-party controller maker to get in on things, and I certainly have some of those too, but most of them have some issues of their own.

That is definitely a thing, for sure, but "captive audience" feels like too strong a term to me. There are plenty of other TRPGs out there (or platformers, metroidvanias, etc.) so it's not as if we don't have any other choices for games to play. And if the follow-up to that is "but Fire Emblem is the best/my favourite!" then I don't see that as a bad thing. Regardless of the quality of their hardware, I'd rather see Nintendo putting out great games than terrible ones.

I see the whole situation as a little bit like a restaurant with great food but awful service. Maybe the food is good enough that I'm willing to put up with the bad service, or maybe the service is bad enough that not even the best food in the world could make me go there. But either way, I'm making my choice as a complete package, weighing the individual factors against my own personal priorities.

Which isn't to say that I think it's fine if Nintendo makes shoddy hardware or if a restaurant has bad service. It's not, and both should absolutely be criticised for it. But there's also an element of personal responsibility and caveat emptor here: if the Switch U comes out and reviews say that it also has joycon drift but I decide to buy it anyway because I really want to play the next Fire Emblem, then that's on me as well.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

When it comes to Joy Con Drift, I've been of several minds about the situation ever since I encountered the problem first in 2018. So much to say, but you can only shout into an uncaring void for so long before you realize you're all alone. Captive Audience is too diplomatic. Nintendo fans are Easy Marks because they're literal children. And even when they grow up it's basic human psychology to revert back to that previous mindspace when you encounter things from your childhood - like Mario. Nintendo are a contender for the least consumer friendly company in the industry because they make High Demand games that are never discounted, can only be played on proprietary hardware with proprietary controllers, and they're the only company out there going after ROM sites and emulators because of the perceived competition and their legal team's failure to get Emulation recognized as Illegal. What they've carved out is the closest thing you could call a 'Monopoly'. They own the software, the hardware, and the distribution of both, and that's how we get problems like the Joy con situation.

But we weren't going to "win the war" against the corporation anyway. These lawsuits were always a longshot. What case would they have: Nintendo is pushing out products with a low shelf-life to push people to buy replacements. Shoddy hardware is a not a crime, and Forced Obsolescence is common enough that many of us know what that term means, because it describes the phone in our pocket. Plus, Nintendo is already offering a free repair service in the US - where the lawsuits are based. They didn't start doing that out of the kindness of their heart or following Microsoft's example with the RROD, they did it because they knew this makes a good legal safety net that won't cut into their bottom line too much so long as they don't advertise the service.

In 2019 I sent in my joy con and got some other dude's joy con in the mail weeks later, but how many other people reading this have done the same? Not many I'd bet. Because it's faster to go out and buy replacements and you only think to send it in when you have a new game you're itching to play - it's urgent that you get a functioning controller. My other drifting joy con I dropped off at my local retro game store, and they repaired it in a day for fifteen dollars. Sure it wasn't free, but my money went to a small business so I felt better emotionally about it. It'll also probably last longer than whatever Nintendo sent me the first time. For the last five years I would only ever use Joycons if the situation 100% demanded it over my many third party controllers.