The wonders of graphite.
One of the things that has been floating around recent of late is Joy-Con drift. Up until now, Nintendo has been tight-lipped about it. But they’ve finally responded. In a statement made to Kotaku, a Nintendo spokesperson said:
At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help.
Coincidentally, Nintendo recently updated their support page with a link specifically for the issue. While sending the Joy-Cons in for repair is an option, there have apparently been mixed results. Some get theirs back, only to have the issue rear its ugly head a little while later. And some are unlucky enough to get their Joy-cons back only to find the issue still present.
As for why it happens, YouTuber Spawn Wave had a video on it, as well as repairing it:
Coincidentally, the problem is fixable, since it has to do with graphite pads on the board (sort of an ironic twist to what typically makes old 90’s/80’s era controllers malfunction). That said, if you can’t or don’t want to send your controller to Nintendo, a replacement stick is roughly $10 anyway, so repairing or replacing it yourself is an option:
Source: Kotaku
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