There’s been a lot of discourse and FUD surrounding stick drift that’s been haunting the Switch 2, since it became a pernicious problem on the Nintendo Switch. But how much of a problem will it really be on the Switch 2?
We had previously reported some findings about Nintendo’s new ‘smooth-gliding sticks’ on the Switch, based on patents and teardowns. We know that the new sticks are being manufactured by industry leader Alps Alpine, that they are not soldered to the main controller board, and the big secret of its smooth gliding; the stick glides around a base ring hidden a few layers under.
But now we have some interesting findings to share. As shared once again by Nintendo Patents Watch, a content creator on Chinese video social media Bilibili put the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons to the roughest test he could think of. If you click over to Bilibili, you can watch him rocking the analog sticks on a right Joy-Con 10,000 times. Some of those movements were done using his thumb, but most of it were the flat palm of his hand making contact with the tip of the stick, as he violently swayed the stick to and fro.
There is no question that this is as rough a test as you can do on a controller, and one might question if you would want to do this to a Switch Pro controller, or for that matter, a DualSense or an Xbox Series Controller.
After this brutal test, the content creator goes into the Switch 2’s calibration menus and found that it remained completely accurate. If it’s possible that this won’t be true of all Switch 2 Joy-Cons and controllers, or that other actions could cause drift, this remains an impressive test. It would be hard to claim that Nintendo did not do their due diligence.
And in a strange flip side of that, we found the story of another content creator who hurt his hands using the Switch 2 Pro Controller. Austin John Plays, who you may have followed in the past for his guides of Switch games, revealed that he developed muscle spasms using the controller.
To cut a long story short, this doesn’t seem to be a design flaw, but a problem unique to him. His hands and the Pro Controller just don’t match up well in size and shape, so that he overextends his right thumb when reaching for the right analog stick. Since he makes video game related content for a living, he also plays considerably more than the average consumer.
So, this could be a problem for some people, but likely not most Switch 2 owners. While we know Nintendo’s reputation for extremely durably child-safe products, the Switch 2 seems to be on a different level based on these two stories. The verdict certainly isn’t out yet when it comes to the Switch 2’s hardware, but there certainly seems to be more evidence that it’s better than the naysayers are claiming it to be.
