Kotaku has been talking to an unnamed supervisor at United Radio which is a Nintendo Joy-Con repair centre in New York who has told the publication that they were constantly overwhelmed with repairs for the Nintendo Switch’s unique controllers. The issue centre around Joy-Con drift which Nintendo rarely acknowledges and has been faced with class-action lawsuits from frustrated customers. Even Nintendo’s president Shuntaro Furukawa had to apologise to customers back in 2020:
“Regarding the Joy-Con, we apologize for any trouble caused to our customers,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said at a recent investor question and answer session. “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 it like to refrain from responding about any specific actions.”
Nintendo president, Shuntaro Furukawa, speaking to investors in 2020
Kotaku says that the company based in New York only has one native permanent English speaker and most of the temporary workers are Vietnamese immigrants. The workers are either on work visas or are American citizens and Kotaku was told that some even celebrated passing their citizenship tests during their employment at the company. United Radio also had a really high turnover rate of employees. The person who Kotaku spoke to said that conditions at the firm were “very stressful,” due to the amount of Joy-Cons sent in by customers for repair and that the high turnover resulted in “lots of” repair mistakes.
“According to Kotaku’s source, customers who sent in their Joy-Cons from 2017 to 2018 were sent new replacements. For a while, this speedy solution helped alleviate the pressure. After that first year, however, the shop’s staff were forced to repair every set of Joy-Cons. Turnaround times were tight and the pace was difficult to maintain. The shop was held to a standard of repairing 90 percent of incoming Joy-Cons within four days, regardless of whether the staffing company sent them new workers or not.”
Kotaku
I can only feel sorry for them. Do not underestimate how much h3ll they went through.
We been through some rough times during the Switch era now because of this stupid Joy-Con drift.
Well, wouldn’t have been a problem if Nintendo bothered to fix the issue once it became more notorious and widespread. Sure, it’s entirely possible the issue was missed during QA on the first several batches of Joy-Cons, but the fact that this is still happening five years later in newer pairs is just pathetic.
You gotta wonder what Iwata would say/do about this.
Exactly so many new different color joycons and special edition joycons not to mention the oled modeled joycons it’s Nintendo’s fault that it was so stubborn to change it where it doesn’t drift.
Where are the ‘Nintendo can do no wrong’ people at? I clicked this article to read dumb comments vehemently defending Nintendo. Very disappointing.
They’ll be here soon give em time 😉.
They’re asleep
It might be time to buy a new video game if this is how you entertain yourself.
I’m a fan of Nintendo but I will out them on there dumb issues:
1 still making the exact Joy Cons to where they still drift
2 take 15 years to make a non Mario/ZELDA Sequel
3 When a future console is in R&D too dumb to not give it descent horsepower in R&D so 3rd party won’t bailout early
4 lie about some games that are near complete and 7 years later still ain’t here
I agree about the first 3 but they never lied about games that are near complete lmao, they just announce games and don’t say anything after that. When development doesn’t go as planned they release an update video letting everyone know it’s not gonna come out soon. It’s not their fault if fans like to jump to conclusions
Nintendo as Principal Skinner:
Nintendo: “Am I out of touch?”
Nintendo: “No, it’s the customers who are wrong.”
if they keep raking in money then are they really wrong? Nintendo fans love to complain about everything but never put their money where their mouth is
Because humans are stupid, is why. Whether by not learning their lesson, believing “making money=good quality”, believing their opinion is a fact & everyone else is wrong, etc. Or thinking because a billion bucks were spent to make a TV series that there is no way the maker would fuck it up. coughTLotR:TheRingsofPowercoughStarWarssequelscough
Yes, the company is in the wrong. The people who buy new joy cons to replace broken ones do it because they have to if they want to play games on their Switch. You could argue that they don’t have to play games on their Switch, but that’s a bit unfair when Nintendo has quite a few exclusive games to play
And let’s not forget that beautiful Nintendo Seal of Quality. Apparently Ninty forgot to honor that this gen.
It’s sort of stupid of Nintendo when the Oled was in R&D that they didn’t look into the Joy Cons back in 2017 to figure out the issue and change it so it doesn’t happen by the time the Oled and its new color Joy Cons arrived. Yet for some stupid reason still make the same remotes back in 2017.
I used to work for United radio back in 2021. They’re constantly backed up for every project whether it Yamaha amps or joycons. At the time we had so many joycons coming in the had to take people from the yamaha project and put the on the drift issues.