European Commission ask Nintendo to repair controllers | Hacker News Reader

European Commission ask Nintendo to repair controllers

social.network.europa.eu

84 pointsabricot59 comments

I don't know how it is in Europe, but in North America, their repair service is top-notch.

2 months ago I sent them a joycon of my 5 year old switch because it started to drift.

I simply filed a form on their website and dropped the joycon at a UPS store. Two weeks later, I received a new joycon by mail. I didn't pay for anything, not even UPS shipping.

Need to try this. I got one that’s bad. I mostly use the the Pro controller so I forget about it but there’s also times when I play Mario Party and need the joy cons for 4 people.

While this is nice, you still lost access to the hardware you own for two weeks because the manufacturer refuses to admit the design flaw.

If they're willing to repair it at no cost and even cover shipping it sounds like they're definitely acknowledging the flaw -- even if it's because someone made them...

They replaced for free a joycon of a 5 year old product, and we are talking about a portable device with which i played intensively, traveled with, dropped, eat on it, splashed water, left in the sun, played at the beach in the sand etc…

As far as I am concerned, they didn’t have to go that extra mile but they did.

That's you lucky. Our controllers started drifting after a few months of light usage.

They have a huge design flaw.

I still have to waste time packing and going to a post office (I have no car and never randomly end at a post office, so that's dedicated time).

And I won't have controllers for 2 weeks.

How would them admitting it help? When my Xbox 360 RROD'd I still had to wait two weeks for them to repair it despite them admitting it.

It's also a design flaw with virtually every controller with an analog stick ever made, should Sony admit it? Microsoft? It effects joycons more because of the analog stick size leaving less room for deadzone. Sony used even smaller sticks in the Vita, you just never hear about it as much because nobody bought one.

Confused about what happened - did they repair or replace your joycon?

Replaced, they could not reproduce the problem.

So, doesn't seem like their repair service is that good and doesn't seem like they acknowledge the fundamental problem then. I mean the end result is you get a working* joycon still, so not terrible, but the root issue is that they built crappy hardware and won't admit it.

*for the next 2 - 60 months

More likely it is not worth the cost of actual repair. The joycons retail for like $40. The additional logistics involved to repair a device instead of replacing it make this not worth it.

To be fair, the joycon was drifting only once in a while (which is super annoying when you play platform games). I am not sure it was worth their time to try to reproduce for too long.

So you received a brand new unit, and not a used, repaired one?

Yes

I can't say for Nintendo, they may very well have excellent support, as does Dell, but frequently I feel like the US get much better product support. In Europe the manufactures fight consumer laws and seem to do everything in their power to not offer the warranty that they are legally obligated to.

It may just be a case of "The grass is always greener", but it seems like the US have all sorts of excellent return, replace or repair options for electronics. Part of it may also be that it's much easier in the US. One language, easy shipping options (as in they can use the same shipping company for all customers), and the laws are more or less the same for the entire country.

I assume for many things there are operations in the US but not in most European countries.

Might be part of the explanation but I'm surprised every time I see European anecdata online like:

> The product wasn't what I wanted but I can't return it to the shop because it is not defective.

Maybe the retail environment in the US has developed higher margins that better accommodate returns.

My impression is that 80’s and 90’s lobbyists were too occupied fighting the EPA to engage the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Maybe the reverse happened in Europe? And now Europe is fixated on the privacy angle of CP.

We actually do have excellent consumer protection, on paper. The issue is that you frequently have to go to court, which mostly favors the consumers. People just aren't willing to spend years getting their laptop, TV or controller fixed.

Apple-Care shouldn't be a thing in the EU, our warranty laws ensure that. In reality, I just want my stuff fixed, not spend three years in a legal battle with Apple.

> Part of it may also be that it's much easier in the US. One language, easy shipping options

I don't think language has anything to do with. It's the regulatory environment and non-unified markets that makes everything in Europe so complicated.

Case point, it's a lot harder to offer physical goods in Canada, with the same profit margins, because of additional regulations & logistics constrains (around cross border shipping). And this is by design; the government want you to create this parallel infrastructure and create local jobs. Same for Europe.

> I don't know how it is in Europe, but in North America, their repair service is top-notch.

Pretty bad. Carmakers for instance occasionally fail to issue recalls for the same faults that they already have in the us.

They should. We have 6 different joycons and 2 have been repaired, the other 2 are showing the damn drift again.

Shipping them is a pain. This whole thing is a mess and the fact that they have to repair is the minimum

Joycons happen to also cost 100$ in Canada, so it's not something cheap.

I'm really bothered. So many years making videogames and they still can't get the analog stick right.

It’s fairly easy to take a jocon apart, and the joysticks are pretty cheap on Amazon. I’ve started taking mine apart and fixing them myself when they start to drift. It’s a pain, but it’s less painful than shipping them off to Nintendo.

I've had to ship back 4 different pairs of controllers twice now. This BS has me second-guessing ever purchasing another Nintendo console.

Very cool post by, uh, the European Commission. Yay casual-tone governance.

Does anyone have a link to some reputable third-party explaining the actual issue?

Of course it's casual. It's a toot on Mastodon.

A toot? That can’t be the real name…

tweet only sounds normal because we're used to it.

That’s not the only difference. “Tweet” had a preexisting definition that’s pleasant: a bird’s chirping.

“Toot” is slang for a fart.

"tweeting" apparently means "to suck your own cock", which describes Twitter pretty well :) /s

Ha, my mistake was using boomer dictionaries.

You can't sleep on Urban Dictionary. It's an essential research tool when brainstorming new product names!

For sure! I'm not a native speaker and didn't know that toot was another word for fart, guess we both learned something new :D

The issue is that the Joy-Cons joystick has what appears to be a design defect that, regardless of how much care is taken, means they have a high likelihood of developing what is known as "drift" or phantom movement without the joystick actually being engaged. This issue has been, at the very least, acknowledged by Nintendo, and for a few years now Nintendo has been repairing/replacing Joy-Cons for free (at least in the US) because of it. I don't know if there have been design changes, but Nintendo's public release response has been mixed in an effort to avoid as much culpability as possible.

The entire controller industry has this problem. Even ~$200 controllers do this; the Xbox Elite 2 for example was/is infamous for it.

Everyone I know who plays on controller complains about the failures.

In +20 years of using mice, guess what I've never had fail?

Hall-effect joysticks don't drift. I've also never had a 360 controller drift. Switch joysticks drift much faster than average.

>Hall-effect joysticks

Is this standard for controllers?

Nope. Hall effect joysticks were encumbered by patents though they are starting to expire off now

I'm not denying that eventually most controllers will drift, but the speed at which these controllers developed a drifting problem was much higher than what is expected on average, even for cheaper made third party controllers.

The scale of the problem is totally different. I've used a bunch of Xbox controllers that never had this issue, but my JoyCons developed it almost immediately.

The issue with Joycons is so much more pronounced. I used the same 360 controller with my PC for about a decade with no issues. The Series x controller I’ve used since then is fine.

My joycons were drifting less than a year after I bought the switch.

Mice are not immune to failure and I have had mice fail on me. Have you been using the same mouse for 20+ years? My favorite one (Saitek Cyborg RAT7) died at the year mark and I won’t buy another one from them for fear of the same thing but it was adjustable in every dimension and as a result was the most comfortable mouse for my merry paws.

Plastic gears running against plastic gears wear down over time because of friction and that creates dust. I have seen some retro modding solutions to this problem that add lubricant to the gear box to significantly reduce friction and wear.

Here's the official press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...

Virtually all controllers share similar technology and one of the features for most of the console manufacturers is that they will break the moment a piece of lint gets stuck between the stick and the sensor. Given how difficult it is to access the sensor in order to fix the issue, and also how open-air the design of these sticks are, I've always assumed that this is on purpose.

I've started using the Power A controllers with the back paddles on PC (or a Razer Wolverine when I was being fancy and wanted LEDs), and I'm much happier now. The only problem I've had with Power A's controllers is that the USB cable has a plastic housing that is a bit oddly shaped and thus it's nigh-impossible to find a replacement, so I'm still stuck with a scenario that I have to RMA a replacement from time to time because they won't sell the cord by itself.

These appear to be a much larger issue than what is normally seen by controllers designed by console manufacturers.

Most controllers are sturdy, but the problems I have with third party controllers are one-offs compared with every. single. console controller having the exact same issue regarding stick draft, and for the exact same reason.

The entire controller industry has this problem. From the base to the top end, controllers fail like crazy due to "stick drift." It's planned obsolescence.

I've been using multiple generations of different console controllers for years, since analog sticks were a thing.

Out of the 8 or 10 joycons (not pairs) that we own, more than half of them are affected by drift -- maybe approaching all of them. I don't know that I've ever had this problem on any other console's controller (and I usually have 3-4 controllers of every other console).

I don't think this is a coincidence -- this issue is way worse on Nintendo Switch controllers than any other controller, even their own prior gen controllers. By at least an order of magnitude, maybe two.

While it may be an industry-wide problem, it's definitely not a problem to this extent.

>From the base to the top end, controllers fail like crazy due to "stick drift." It's planned obsolescence.

Or maybe the technology to make it last forever doesn't exist or is prohibitively expensive? Blaming it on "planned obsolescence" makes as much sense as saying that batteries are "planned obsolescence" because they eventually wear out.

Be nice if they did the same for Sony PS5 controllers, I've had two go on me (in a different way each) and god knows the PS5 isn't out all that long.

Any guidance on how to get controllers repaired under this directive? (EU based but don't have the receipts anymore)

Probably start a repair request to support: https://www.nintendo-europe.com/landing/Language-Selection-E...

If they charge you, pay and complain?

You have to fill in an online form. Go to support.nintendo.com, choose your country, and search for the page about joycon drift — e.g. in the UK it’s https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Nintendo-Switch/Troublesh....

I know many will want this covered by Nintendo out of principle, but it is a very easy fix to perform yourself for the average hacker. The parts and tools are inexpensive as well. I have replaced 5 joycon sticks now and I find it rather satisfying.

This! I'm still using the original joycons I got with the switch. Any time I get joystick drift, I crack the joycon open and swap the joystick out. Takes five minutes and I'm immediately back to gaming. I bought a bunch of replacements off aliexpress a few years back, so each repair costs me less than a dollar.

Hall effect joysticks seem really promising. Fundamentally, due to the way they work, they should be much less likely to develop drift compared to potentiometer-based joysticks.

At least in things like washing machines or water pumps for current sensing these seem to be one of the more easy to break components.

Let's hope they last longer when no water is involved.

That might be a correlation-vs-causation thing, where these components break often because they're put in the most stressed parts of the machine.

Oh, so it's not my poor motor skills, and fat fingers - it's the controller.

It's always been the controller, mon ami

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