The Joy-Con controversy continues. New information is out regarding the class-action lawsuit, filed back in 2019 over players having to deal with their Switch Joy-Con analogue sticks defectively drifting. Nintendo recently tried to have the case dismissed, but the presiding United States District Judge rejected the attempt. While the lawsuit won't be disregarded, it instead will be headed to arbitration, despite the wishes of the plaintiff, who believed that arbitration wouldn't allow affected users to get injunctive relief, likely meaning Nintendo wouldn't be required to fix Joy-Con drift. The case moving to arbitration requires both the plaintiff (Ryan Diaz) and Nintendo to come to an agreement together, with the help of an impartial third party.

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[grey72]

About time ninty lost a lawsuit

edit: Looking at the comments, maybe there's some truth to the "GBAtemp is full of nintenyearolds" meme lol

 

[nero99]

YES! Nintendo has to learn that we won’t keep quite about flaws and us having to waste time and money to play their console. It should be a one time purchase. No more.

so tell me.. do you have that same out look on.. let's say cars. All cars are made to break down and have faults so you'll buy a new one or waste money repairing them. Where's the lawsuit against car manufactures that pull this same stuff?

 

[Skelletonike]

Good, if Nintendo actually cared, they would have kicked around Nintendo of Europe, and told them to offer fixes for free, like the US has.

If it's within 2 years, they do fix pretty much anything (as long as you didn't break it yourself) for no cost at all.
They have fixed all my systems up to date with no issues whatsoever. Recently my joycon stopped working and within a week I received a new one.

 

[kumikochan]

Damn. You must have really bad luck when it comes to 360 controllers. Mine have literally not broken and i've use them for quite a while.

Same, there isn't a controller that fell down as much as that one for me and my 3 controllers still work all this time without any drift

 

[sj33]

The drift is something that people don't take seriously until it happens to them, frankly. I had the drift issue and I'm not even a particularly heavy Switch user. It's a thing, no amount of 'but what about...' changes that.

Thankfully I was able to replace the analogue stick myself. But most regular users can't do that.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Nintendo wants to have this dismissed? Oh man, they love playing this game.

Well there's a method to lawyering.

 

[FAST6191]

so tell me.. do you have that same out look on.. let's say cars. All cars are made to break down and have faults so you'll buy a new one or waste money repairing them. Where's the lawsuit against car manufactures that pull this same stuff?

This is more in line with failures in manufacture, design, warranty and the like than planned obsolescence (which is shady but not really against the law if it does not impact safety and lasts what might be said to be a reasonable time in some jurisdictions -- Europe having various consumer protections there with phrases like that).

Car wise if you want US examples then see "Lemon law", or if you want actual statutes then Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act... it is a rather popular area of law and even has aspects of it that see the lawyer involved paid by the vehicle company (a somewhat unusual thing within the US). There was also a massive case recently against Ford for the dual clutch transmission -- https://www.thedrive.com/news/32500...us-owners-over-faulty-automatic-transmissions and plenty of such cases get brought all the time.

 

[Reecey]

Uh, nope, I mean arbitration.

https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit...itch-joy-con-class-action-sent-to-arbitration





https://www.law360.com/productliabi...bitrate-joystick-dispute-but-can-t-dismiss-it

I see maybe in the US they class that part as Arbitration in the UK we call it Mediation I know this because I’ve been involved in many litigation cases and the judge always mentions go away and Mediate I’ve never heard a Judge say Arbitration over in the UK unless the other side makes a submission in court for Arbitration.

 

[MagnesG]

The drift is something that people don't take seriously until it happens to them, frankly. I had the drift issue and I'm not even a particularly heavy Switch user. It's a thing, no amount of 'but what about...' changes that.

Thankfully I was able to replace the analogue stick myself. But most regular users can't do that.

Most regular users could, maybe send in for repair? Why is that not an option?

 

[sj33]

Most regular users could, maybe send in for repair? Why is that not an option?

Why should they have to? It is a manufacturing fault, not natural wear and tear.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Out of all the joycons out ther thers prob less than 1% thts faulty or just aggressive use by the player and I don't want to see Microsoft at the top of the tree at console gaming as they should stick to pcs due to as you prob kno the xbox one name was total BS and the Series X with another x in the title is mor BS lol

Every single person with a Switch and every single JoyCon sold seems to be affected sooner or later. I've been nothing but careful with my Switch and I don't even use it that much and it's still starting to experience drifting problems (bought shortly after launch), meanwhile my cousin who has had it much shorter than me has sent it in for repair twice already and is experiencing it a third time but he plays the thing all day.
They didn't even make an attempt to fix it on the Switch Lite which has non removable controllers making it a much bigger issue than it already was.

Ive never seen a brand new switch have this problem

Ive never seen a well taken care of switch have this problem

I always see this on nasty switches brought in - Mostly from kids

Wear and tear and mishandling of the hardware is the cause

Nin should not have to be dealing with this

As said, it seems to happen to everyone sooner or later, being rough with the controllers will accelerate the process, but it's no doubt a design flaw as they should last longer than this.

I on the other hand have dealt with Joycons that drift straight out of the box - the first run of the controllers was definitely defective in the sense that the tracks were made out of very soft material and would tear over time because the contacts were fairly thin, sharp and would often bend when pressed down. Nintendo has addressed the issue in the second run of controllers by increasing the width of the contacts, along with addressing the antenna issue - new joycons and new sticks shouldn't run into this problem unless they're indeed ridden into the ground hard. There's a good chance that they've hardened the tracks as well.

I wasn't aware that they made changes to improve the issue, but looking at the picture, it's a very small difference and not at all a fix. But at least they tried. The sticks should last a bit longer, but the difference in the size of the pads is maybe 10-15%, logically it won't last longer than that.

The signal issue isn't fixed - actually, they haven't done anything to fix the left JoyCon, which has a different antenna design and so doesn't experience the signal issue as commonly, the changes they made to the right JoyCon made it about on par with the left one, but they can still have issues when played at a normal TV distance of ~10 ft.
It seems to not just be a problem with the JoyCons but also the Switch itself, as it has an extremely weak wifi signal when compared to other devices, even smartphones which are much more compact inside and logically should have worse signal. When the ARMS multiplayer demo came out I played a bit with my brother when i was visiting mom. In his room, the Switch's wifi signal was slow and would constantly drop out, leading to it being difficult to play more than one match in a row and getting disconnected between almost every match, and taking a long time to reconnect and find another match. My phone worked just fine on wifi in the same room. No issues with wifi on the Switch at home, where my router is in the same room, but you shouldn't need to be in the same room as the wifi router to get a decent signal. No other device requires that. Also no issues with playing multiplayer on other consoles like the Wii U or 3DS in the same room.
Part of the issue is probably the fact that the JoyCons are so small your hands almost fully cover them in normal use, and the Switch is mostly covered up by the dock which might affect the signal strength on that end. They might have to fully redesign the dock, and partly redesign the JoyCon PCBs to fully fix the issue, and even that's not a guaranteed fix.

They certainly did what they could to fix the signal issue without a major redesign (which is expensive) and maybe it's not a common enough issue now to be a major concern. But the signal is still multiple times weaker than on other consoles (as in, controllers on any other system will work in a completely different room with no issues, at least twice the distance and with walls between the controller and system) and that just seems like poor design.

any joystick will drift.
small joysticks simply will drift earlier.
why is nintendo singled out in this?

there is no fix beyond making joycons much thicker, or cutting battery in halve to make more room for a larger joystick module

I would happily take thicker JoyCons. They are too thin as it is making them uncomfortable to use. Add grips to them so they fit better in people's hands, and solve 2 issues at once.

 

[MagnesG]

Why should they have to? It is a manufacturing fault, not natural wear and tear.

I'm confused, isn't the point of warranty is for people to sent a faulty product to?

And what's the point of comparing it for a natural wear and tear case?

 

[FAST6191]

I'm confused, isn't the point of warranty is for people to sent a faulty product to?

And what's the point of comparing it for a natural wear and tear case?

One of the issues was Nintendo denying warranty claims or giving people the run around with them.

Warranty is supposed to be for manufacturing defect, however given various circumstances it can rise to the level of lawsuit when things were made badly as a design flaw, negligence is involved or other things related to that which substantially impact the use/enjoyment of the product (class actions not my particular field here).

Similarly most things that are not service level agreements will have a thing saying we don't deal with natural wear and tear, indeed most warranty law gives people the option to exclude that along with accidental/intentional damage. A manufacturer/vendor might still repair something under goodwill (though that might come from a different pot of money so mileage may vary on that one). If it was people throwing controllers or someone that played it for 18 hours a day then that would potentially be a different matter, though given their past efforts in creating robust items it would probably still represent a slip.

 

[drazenm]

Filthy corporate scum, would use any hole in the law that they can to avoid responsibility for faulty product. Scum, all of them are just scum. I think I'm gonna vomit to death if I hear one more time how they give a fcuk about us consumers/human/gamers/families /fans.

 

[MagnesG]

One of the issues was Nintendo denying warranty claims or giving people the run around with them.

Warranty is supposed to be for manufacturing defect, however given various circumstances it can rise to the level of lawsuit when things were made badly as a design flaw, negligence is involved or other things related to that which substantially impact the use/enjoyment of the product (class actions not my particular field here).

Similarly most things that are not service level agreements will have a thing saying we don't deal with natural wear and tear, indeed most warranty law gives people the option to exclude that along with accidental/intentional damage. A manufacturer/vendor might still repair something under goodwill (though that might come from a different pot of money so mileage may vary on that one). If it was people throwing controllers or someone that played it for 18 hours a day then that would potentially be a different matter, though given their past efforts in creating robust items it would probably still represent a slip.

I've never heard a denial from Nintendo regarding warranty claims (this point already negates pretty much the whole rage inducing nonsense from uninformed people), nor seeing any complete proof of design flaw of the joycons with mass robust data gathered - wannabe hypothesis even from professionals not factoring to the mass end-of-the-line production is just bullshit analysis.

The fact that this case had become arbitrary is already enough proof as it is about the faulty percentage, though I do agree that it is a tad bit higher percent compared to previous controllers but no, absolutely not at the scale of disaster.

 

[FAST6191]

I've never heard a denial from Nintendo regarding warranty claims (this point already negates pretty much the whole rage inducing nonsense from uninformed people), nor seeing any complete proof of design flaw of the joycons with mass robust data gathered - wannabe hypothesis even from professionals not factoring to the mass end-of-the-line production is just bullshit analysis.

The fact that this case had become arbitrary is already enough proof as it is about the faulty percentage, though I do agree that it is a tad bit higher percent compared to previous controllers but no, absolutely not at the scale of disaster.

Some of the warranty run around stuff was in the previous thread. I don't know if it made it into evidence or anything at this point though.

I have not properly gone into the analysis of the issue but production quirks (not that such things change much as we care about end results and end results are quite a bit of drifting) would not really trouble a mechanical design or materials analysis too much. Stress analysis, measurement of thickness, materials testing and more is quite capable of being conducted on small samples of devices. Indeed the manufacture you so want people to contemplate probably does small sample testing, aka batch testing, as testing everything is expensive and usually redundant for cheapo consumer goods, though they would hopefully have done the stress analysis and an accelerated test long before then -- I really do want to find the video again but one E3 filler video some years back saw a tour of Microsoft's controller testing setup which was impressive.

The case being sent to arbitration (a rather different thing to arbitrary) is an interesting one. I don't know enough to say what goes here, whether there is some kind of incentive to have such things go to it rather than carry on to jury class action or the like. If it had been dismissed at this stage (which was blocked) then that would have been something I take note of.

Where does disaster come into anything or did I use or defend such a phrasing?

 

[altorn]

I finally got a joycon drift after 3 years of owning my Switch. I haven't even played it that long, probably <100 hours.

 

[yoyoyo69]

So Nintendo had billions in the bank, made billions more from Switch and will make many, many more billions in software sales for said sold systems. How much do you think the settlement will be? Few mill?

They'd love this to just go away, disgusting they can ignore it.

 

[MagnesG]

Some of the warranty run around stuff was in the previous thread. I don't know if it made it into evidence or anything at this point though.

I have not properly gone into the analysis of the issue but production quirks (not that such things change much as we care about end results and end results are quite a bit of drifting) would not really trouble a mechanical design or materials analysis too much. Stress analysis, measurement of thickness, materials testing and more is quite capable of being conducted on small samples of devices. Indeed the manufacture you so want people to contemplate probably does small sample testing, aka batch testing, as testing everything is expensive and usually redundant for cheapo consumer goods, though they would hopefully have done the stress analysis and an accelerated test long before then -- I really do want to find the video again but one E3 filler video some years back saw a tour of Microsoft's controller testing setup which was impressive.

The case being sent to arbitration (a rather different thing to arbitrary) is an interesting one. I don't know enough to say what goes here, whether there is some kind of incentive to have such things go to it rather than carry on to jury class action or the like. If it had been dismissed at this stage (which was blocked) then that would have been something I take note of.

Where does disaster come into anything or did I use or defend such a phrasing?

My bad, that was arbitration yes.

The implying disaster was more on the questionable reaction from others especially after the case blown up, we can already see these even on this thread itself.

At the end I don't care much though, just like how this case was first picked up by opportunist lawyers trying to score some legal money, this is also a typical "just business" move for Nintendo.

 

[Dr.Hacknik]

Nintendo wants to have this dismissed? Oh man, they love playing this game.

Yet the second a fan makes a non-profit fan game, they spent months on, of hard work; they want to purge it from the universe and fine them hundreds of thousands.

I love you Nintendo, but you're a confused bi-polar prick sometimes.