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Adrift

Nintendo isn’t using anti-drift Hall effect sensors on Switch 2 joysticks

But Nintendo promises "redesigned" Joy-Cons are "smoother" and "more durable."

Kyle Orland – | 122
Are we going to have to go through this stick-replacement process again on the Switch 2? Credit: iFixit
Are we going to have to go through this stick-replacement process again on the Switch 2? Credit: iFixit

After dealing with years of widespread reports of "stick drift" on the original Switch Joy-Cons, Nintendo watchers have been hoping the Switch 2 would make use of magnetic Hall effect sensors that avoid most of the physical wear and tear that causes the problem. Now, though, a Nintendo executive has confirmed that the Joy-Cons on the new console won't make use of the more reliable but more expensive technology.

"Well, the Joy-Con 2's controllers have been designed from the ground up," Nintendo of America Senior Vice President of Product Development & Publishing Nate Bihldorff told enthusiast site Nintendo Life in a recent interview. "They're not Hall effect sticks, but they feel really good."

The confirmation comes after Nintendo pointedly refused to offer details about the Switch 2's joystick hardware at a roundtable Q&A session attended by Ars last week. When a reporter asked whether stick drift "is the sort of thing that has been improved with the Joy-Con 2 and the Pro Controller 2 as well," Switch 2 Technical Director Tetsuya Sasaki responded (via a translator) that the "new Joy-Con 2 controllers have been designed from the ground up from scratch to have bigger movement, and also a lot smoother movement."

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Since then, Nintendo had offered similarly vague responses to other outlets when asked directly about the issue. "We haven’t shared what the inner mechanisms are of those control sticks, and if I were to dive into it, it would basically be sharing the whole blueprint of the control stick," Sasaki told Polygon. "The control sticks for Joy-Con 2 controllers have been redesigned and have improved in areas such as durability," a Nintendo spokesperson told VGC.

In an "Ask the Developer" interview recently posted by Nintendo, producer Kouichi Kawamoto reiterated that the company "redesigned everything from scratch for Joy-Con 2... Compared to the Joy-Con controllers for Switch, the control sticks are larger and more durable, with smoother movement."

What’s the problem?

Without the use of Hall effect sensors (or similar magnetic technologies), though, that redesigned "smoothness" might not hold up to repeated use. On the original Switch, the drifting issue seems to be caused by metal contacts inside the board that rub up against graphite with repeated use. That wear and tear can cause debris to get caught in the sensing mechanism, leading it to have significant problems detecting when the joystick is properly centered.

The drifting issue got so bad on the Switch that Nintendo had to offer free Joy-Con replacements to anyone facing the issue. But while the Switch's small joysticks seem particularly susceptible to the problem, Xbox and PlayStation owners have also reported stick drift problems with standard controllers that don't use Hall effect sensors.

Maybe the redesigned, slightly larger sticks on the Switch 2 Joy-Cons will end up more "durable," as Nintendo says, and less susceptible to a problem that led to an unsuccessful class-action lawsuit last time around. With a Hall effect sensor now out of the question, though, we'll have to wait for more details on what's actually going on inside this "redesign" before we get our hopes up.

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Kyle Orland Senior Gaming Editor
Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.
122 Comments
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TimeToTilt
My guess is the reason switch was so susceptible is because the joystick had a tiny range of motion because of its size. So drift that wouldn't actually impact a longer throw joystick showe badly on the sensitive joycons.

Bet they are hoping the larger size/longer throw of the new switch fixes it.
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photovirus
It's all about the relative failure rate. My understanding is that drift can and does happen on pretty much any non-Hall joystick, but that the Switch Joy-Cons were particularly susceptible based on their size and design.
It really depends on quality of potentiometers used.

The difference is easier to observe in actual joysticks: e. g. if you grab a Thrustmaster T16000(M), its twist pot fails in 0.5—1 years (although it can be cleaned, then it works a bit longer). However, if you find a 25-year old CH Products unit, chances are its pots will be just fine. They didn't skimp.

Another example is audio faders, they're pots as well, and there are some good ones that won't fail.

So while it's probably not great that Nintendo won't use contactless sensors, maybe they still learned their lesson and got decent pots this time.
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