Nintendo has been urged to commission an independent investigation right into a known issue with the Joy-Con controllers on its Switch games console.
Consumer group Which? has said the gaming giant also needs to make the findings and outcomes of any investigation publicly available.
For the reason that Nintendo Switch was launched in 2017, there have been some reports of what has grow to be referred to as “drift”, where the console registers movement even when players usually are not touching the joysticks.
Nintendo says the problem has only affected a small variety of devices.
The corporate said it has been making continuous improvements to the Joy-Cons since launch and continues to encourage any customers who’ve experience issues to contact them.
Nintendo must commission an urgent independent investigation into why this problem occurs and make the findings public
Which?
Which? said a survey it had carried out of 919 owners of the unique Switch within the UK found some 40% had experienced drift in some unspecified time in the future.
The patron group said customers also needed to be more proactive should they experience the fault after finding that 73% of those that did encounter the problem didn’t contact Nintendo about it, despite the gaming firm offering a two-year warranty on the console.
Of those that did contact Nintendo, Which? said its research found that 19% didn’t receive a repair or substitute.
Which? said it had carried out its own in-lab durability testing on Switch consoles as a part of its research and had been unable to locate any instances of drift, saying it believed this showed how hard it was for the fault to be detected, and that, due to this fact, a deeper, independent investigation into the problem could be best.
“Our research shows that drift problems proceed to plague Nintendo Switch owners yet too often they could be left footing the bill themselves to exchange faulty controllers or face a lottery after they contact Nintendo for support,” Which? director of policy and advocacy Rocio Concha said.
“Nintendo must commission an urgent independent investigation into why this problem occurs and make the findings public.
“The video game giant must also commit to completely free-of-charge repairs or replacements for those affected by the issue and must promote this scheme so that buyers know that support is out there.”
In response, Nintendo said: “The share of Joy-Con controllers which have been reported as experiencing issues with the analogue stick prior to now is small and we have now been making continuous improvements to the Joy-Con analogue stick since its launch in 2017.
“We expect all our hardware to perform as designed, and if anything falls in need of this goal we at all times encourage consumers to contact Nintendo customer support, who might be joyful to openly and leniently resolve any consumer issues related to the Joy-Con controllers’ analogue sticks, including in cases where the warranty may now not apply.”
