Why is analog stick drift so associated with the Nintendo Switch's Joycons? [closed]
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AFAIK, analog stick drift has been reported in every analog stick controller I'm familiar with, apparently fixable by painstakingly scraping out dust and gunk. However, the issue seems to be most widely reported in the Switch's Joycons by far, and for some yet-to-be-confirmed reason (dust, wear), it seems much harder to fix. Anecdotally, I haven't heard anybody I knew complain about analog stick drift until a friend's Switch started drifting; I have never owned a Switch and have never ran into the issue on any controller.
Is this just media hyperfocus on an extremely popular console, or is analog stick drift actually a much more frequent and harder to fix issue in Switches? If it is, then can someone offer a hardware comparison against more robust controllers, with more detail beyond "dust and wear" and perhaps also explaining why they don't just copy better analog sticks?
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Is Joy-Con drift still a problem 2021?
Best answer: Unfortunately, it is possible for the Switch OLED to experience drift issues. Nintendo has made minor updates to Joy-Cons over the years, but the ones in the Switch OLED are the same as the controllers that came with the Switch V2, so they're still susceptible to drift.Why is Joy-Con drift a thing?
It's unclear what the cause of Joy-Con drift is but one Joy-Con teardown published on Reddit by user u/rainbopython in April 2019 claims that the drift problem could be caused by wear-and-tear over time while other theories point towards build-up of dust inside the casing around the stick.Will buying new Joy-Cons fix drift?
The company will now repair drifting Joy-Con controllers for free, even if your controllers are outside the regular warranty. But Nintendo hasn't changed the design of the controllers, and it's still an issue today, even on the refreshed Switch models that launched last year.How You Can Fix Your Drifting Joy-Con Stick - Nintendo Switch
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Images: Dmitry Demidov, Polina Tankilevitch, Polina Tankilevitch, Tara Winstead