Nintendo reveals Switch's Joy-Con drift issue may never be fixed

Anyone who owns a Nintendo Switch will likely have heard of the “Joy-Con drift” issues that people have encountered with laptop controllers.

This has been reported to occur when Joy-Con controllers enter false controls, even when players are not touching the controllers' controllers.

Nintendo has previously been very quiet about this annoying phenomenon and has not said whether the new Nintendo Switch OLED has fixed the issues with the controllers.

We finally have information on Joy-Con controllers straight from Nintendo, but that might not be the news we wanted.

In a question-and-answer session on the Nintendo Switch OLED, Nintendo revealed that it is aware of the issues and has made constant improvements to the Joy-Cons. However, Ko Shiota, chief technology officer at Nintendo, claimed that the Joy-Con will always wear out over time.

When asked if “wear and tear is inevitable as long as the parts are physically in contact” for the Switch's Joy-Con controller, Shiota said:

“Yes, for example, car tires wear out when the car is moving because they are in constant friction with the ground to turn. So with that same premise, we asked ourselves how to improve durability, and not just that, but how can operability and durability coexist? This is something that we are constantly addressing.

The Nintendo Switch OLED, however, has the latest joysticks that have been improved, according to Nintendo. But that doesn't rule out the possibility of a Joy-Con drift happening, so it's still worth watching.

In fact, it looks like it could continue to be a problem until Nintendo redesigns the Joy-Con controllers, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

The OLED Switch officially launched today. If you're interested in seeing what we thought about it, check out our review by clicking on the previous link.