Do we know anything about the types of sticks they’re using this time? The original Switch’s shit starts drifting so quickly… It’s why I sold the system and just kept my games. My PC and PS5 controllers haven’t broken once, but I went through 4 pairs of joycons in less than a year.
I do believe there are replacement sticks available nowadays that should mostly eliminate drift.
Edit
Yeah, I found them. They’re made by a company called Gulikit. I know the joycons are faulty little things, but I will hand it to nintendo that they’re the easiest controllers to work on currently. No soldering needed to replace the sticks.
Yeah, they’re not perfect as drop-in replacements.
They fix the problem of the joystick inputs appearing to hitch when at the edges of the gate, but they have way worse variance in readings when in the default position.
Anecdotally, I found Nintendo’s on-device calibration settings to suck. They don’t give enough control over deadzone and range parameters to actually make up for using a different sensor type. When repairing people’s joycons, I ended up using PC software to overwrite the joycon factory calibrations to make things actually behave…
Yeah I replaced mine with Gulikit sticks after they started drifting while playing BotW. They were surprisingly easy to service, no soldering or special tools required.
Thanks for the tip in your edit. I had 4 pairs of official joycons drift, I eventually just bought a pair of 3rd party ones to keep mounted on it and those have been working fine for over 3 years now. I still have the official joycons, actually had 2 of them serviced and repaired by Nintendo after that class action lawsuit (Nintendo said they’d repair any drifting joycon for free regardless if they’re out of warranty).
I have had numerous sets start to drift, except the set that came with my Diablo special edition switch. I think those are 6 or 7 years old now. It is so odd those are fine but none of my others are.
The drift that joycons get is almost always just caused by dirt/gunk under the joystick flaps. If you spray a little electrical cleaner up under the flaps it fixes the drift immediately. Might have to repeat it 1-2 times a year.
It’s always bothered me how big of deal joycon drift is when it has such an easy fix. Obviously it would be better if I didn’t happen at all, but it seems silly that people are throwing away good controllers that only needed a 5 second cleaning. Only thing I’ve ever had to replace any of my joycon controllers over is problems with the rail connections to the switch, where it swaps back and forth between wireless and direct connected. But my original 2016 joycons are still going strong, just stuck as wireless only joycons.
Not only did I keep them clean like all my other electronics, I had taken them apart to do a deeper cleaning after responses like yours when I posted about it on Reddit. The drift still persisted. I wasn’t just tossing out $70 controllers because they were dirty.
Even if that was the culprit, it still speaks to low quality when other controllers don’t need to be cleaned so often.
Opening up the controller and cleaning the joysticks directly might have actually made it worse. The joysticks have their own lubrication, if you clean the directly you can remove that and ruin them.
My experience has been that cleaning up the joysticks with the controller closed up is safe and generally fixes any drift or sticking buttons. Opening up the controller and trying to clean it with the same spray can be damaging and isn’t recommended.
And to be clear, the actual stick mechanism can break down and cause drift too. But every case of joycon drift I’ve ever seen between my couple sets and friends’ sets were always fixed by a quick spray of cleaner.
You’re vastly downplaying the problem. There’s a reason a class action lawsuit went forward with tons of evidence backing up that it wasn’t simply the user’s error in properly maintaining the joycon. I’ve bought a joycon and had it started drifting within weeks before, even before I had kids. The sticks were just poorly designed, simple as that.
I’m not claiming it’s a standard maintenance practice, most people won’t have the spray, and aren’t accustomed to needing to needing to maintain a joystick like that.
But it is truly a simple, cheap, easy fix for almost all cases of joystick drift (not just on joycons, but all controllers). I really think nintendo should have worked to spread the knowledge, and provided free cleaner to people with issues.
Do we know anything about the types of sticks they’re using this time? The original Switch’s shit starts drifting so quickly… It’s why I sold the system and just kept my games. My PC and PS5 controllers haven’t broken once, but I went through 4 pairs of joycons in less than a year.
I do believe there are replacement sticks available nowadays that should mostly eliminate drift.
Edit
Yeah, I found them. They’re made by a company called Gulikit. I know the joycons are faulty little things, but I will hand it to nintendo that they’re the easiest controllers to work on currently. No soldering needed to replace the sticks.
I did that exact replacement. One of the Hall replacements began drifting as well.
I’ve never had drift on any other system. Weird.
Yeah, they’re not perfect as drop-in replacements.
They fix the problem of the joystick inputs appearing to hitch when at the edges of the gate, but they have way worse variance in readings when in the default position.
Anecdotally, I found Nintendo’s on-device calibration settings to suck. They don’t give enough control over deadzone and range parameters to actually make up for using a different sensor type. When repairing people’s joycons, I ended up using PC software to overwrite the joycon factory calibrations to make things actually behave…
Yeah I replaced mine with Gulikit sticks after they started drifting while playing BotW. They were surprisingly easy to service, no soldering or special tools required.
Thanks for the tip in your edit. I had 4 pairs of official joycons drift, I eventually just bought a pair of 3rd party ones to keep mounted on it and those have been working fine for over 3 years now. I still have the official joycons, actually had 2 of them serviced and repaired by Nintendo after that class action lawsuit (Nintendo said they’d repair any drifting joycon for free regardless if they’re out of warranty).
I have had numerous sets start to drift, except the set that came with my Diablo special edition switch. I think those are 6 or 7 years old now. It is so odd those are fine but none of my others are.
Allegedly it will be Hall-Effect-Sticks.
The drift that joycons get is almost always just caused by dirt/gunk under the joystick flaps. If you spray a little electrical cleaner up under the flaps it fixes the drift immediately. Might have to repeat it 1-2 times a year.
It’s always bothered me how big of deal joycon drift is when it has such an easy fix. Obviously it would be better if I didn’t happen at all, but it seems silly that people are throwing away good controllers that only needed a 5 second cleaning. Only thing I’ve ever had to replace any of my joycon controllers over is problems with the rail connections to the switch, where it swaps back and forth between wireless and direct connected. But my original 2016 joycons are still going strong, just stuck as wireless only joycons.
Not only did I keep them clean like all my other electronics, I had taken them apart to do a deeper cleaning after responses like yours when I posted about it on Reddit. The drift still persisted. I wasn’t just tossing out $70 controllers because they were dirty.
Even if that was the culprit, it still speaks to low quality when other controllers don’t need to be cleaned so often.
Opening up the controller and cleaning the joysticks directly might have actually made it worse. The joysticks have their own lubrication, if you clean the directly you can remove that and ruin them.
My experience has been that cleaning up the joysticks with the controller closed up is safe and generally fixes any drift or sticking buttons. Opening up the controller and trying to clean it with the same spray can be damaging and isn’t recommended.
And to be clear, the actual stick mechanism can break down and cause drift too. But every case of joycon drift I’ve ever seen between my couple sets and friends’ sets were always fixed by a quick spray of cleaner.
You’re vastly downplaying the problem. There’s a reason a class action lawsuit went forward with tons of evidence backing up that it wasn’t simply the user’s error in properly maintaining the joycon. I’ve bought a joycon and had it started drifting within weeks before, even before I had kids. The sticks were just poorly designed, simple as that.
I’m not claiming it’s a standard maintenance practice, most people won’t have the spray, and aren’t accustomed to needing to needing to maintain a joystick like that.
But it is truly a simple, cheap, easy fix for almost all cases of joystick drift (not just on joycons, but all controllers). I really think nintendo should have worked to spread the knowledge, and provided free cleaner to people with issues.
That was not the problem in “almost all cases.” Seriously, look up the class action lawsuit regarding it.