Nintendo President Apologizes For Your Most Pressing Switch Issue

By this point, the issues with Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons have been well documented. The Joy-Cons, while perhaps more functional than a standard gamepad, are also more a fair bit more fragile. Ever since the Switch launched, players have been reporting issues with the thumbsticks on their Joy-Cons drifting – that is, registering input when players aren't making any.

It's been a problem that's plagued the Switch seemingly regardless of model, and in a recent call with investors [PDF], Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa actually touched on the drifting issues. As translated by Kotaku, Furukawa briefly apologized for the Joy-Con woes Switch users are experiencing, but didn't say much more beyond that.

"Regarding the Joy-Con, we apologize for any trouble caused to our customers," Furukawa said. "We are continuing to aim to improve our products, but as the Joy-Con is the subject of a class-action lawsuit in the United States and this is still a pending issue, we would like to refrain from responding about any specific actions."

As Kotaku notes, this is apparently the first time that Nintendo has apologized for the problem. The class-action lawsuit Furukawa references was filed in July 2019 – nearly a year ago – by players who experienced Joy-Con drift both in the standard Switch and, later, in the Switch Lite.

Here in the US, Nintendo has set up a special Joy-Con repair page on its support site, which helps illustrate just how widespread the issue may be. Despite this, there's no indication of an incoming Joy-Con redesign that might help alleviate drifting issues in future controllers, but we'll see if anything changes after this class-action lawsuit and Nintendo of Japan's apology.