Nintendo denies widespread Joy-Con technical issues

With the launch of the Nintendo Switch, we’ve seen several reports on the internet that indicate people are experiencing trouble with their Joy-Con controllers. Sometimes the controllers seem to desync randomly and both the left and the right Joy-Con have reported issues.

Last week an interview with Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime touched on this, but after the interview appeared on the internet, Nintendo decided to release a clarification statement about the Joy-Con issues that are being discussed on forums across the web.

These reports suggest bad antenna placement contributes to a weak signal, but Nintendo says there have been no widespread reports of issues with its latest hardware.

At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we want our consumers to have a positive experience. It is common with any new innovative consumer technology for consumers to have questions, and Nintendo Switch is no exception.

There are no widespread technical problems, and all issues are being handled promptly, including the reports regarding the left Joy-Con Bluetooth connection. To best support our customers, we continuously update the online consumer support site and provide real-time answers to the questions we are receiving.

The number [of Joy-Con replacement or repair requests received] is not significant, and is consistent with what we’ve seen for any new hardware we have launched.

We want our consumers to get up and running quickly to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we encourage them to contact Nintendo’s Consumer Service team.

The bolded portion of this quote is my own highlighting and I think that’s important to remember here. Any console launch will come with its share of issues and that can seem very overblown with everyone on the internet is focusing on these issues. The first generation of Xbox 360 consoles famously had trouble with the Red Ring of Death issue, while the PS3 Yellow Light of Death plagued that console.