Switch's Joy-Con controllers have become notorious for their struggles with "drift", to the point that lawsuits have been launched over the issue, the EU has pledged to investigate, and Nintendo's president has even formally apologised. A new report, though, shines additional light on the extent of the issue, claiming that Nintendo's US arm was receiving "easily thousands" of faulty controllers a week for repair at the height of the problem.
That's according to a new report by Kotaku, which, citing a former supervisor at the Switch repair facility (run by United Radio under contract with Nintendo), claims the volume of repairs got so high - with "hundreds" of faulty controllers arriving each day - that work became "very stressful", leading to high turnover in the department and "lots of" repair mistakes.
Nintendo's initial response to the Joy-Con drift problem, reportedly saw the company providing replacements for customers' faulty Joy-Cons between 2017 and 2018; however, that policy is said to have eventually changed and repair staff were then required to repair every set of Joy-Cons received. At the height of Switch's Joy-Con drift issues, Nintendo's repair centre was reportedly receiving “easily thousands" of faulty units each week, necessitating the establishment of new workplace specifically for controller repairs.