The Joy-Con 2 controllers Nintendo Switch 2 comes equipped with will not feature Hall effect analog sticks, Nintendo has now confirmed, dashing hopes that the new controllers might make use of the stick-drift immune technology.
“The Joy-Con 2’s controllers have been designed from the ground up,” Nintendo of America’s SVP of product development and publishing, Nate Bihldorff, tells Nintendo Life. “They’re not Hall Effect sticks, but they feel really good.”
Standard analog stick assemblies use an array of moving parts to sense how you’re positioning the stick, and these parts wear down over time, causing issues like stick drift. Hall effect controllers instead use magnets to measure the position of the sticks. Since there’s nothing there to cause friction, there’s far less wear and tear, making these sticks effective immune to drift.
“Really, every time we put out a new hardware,” Bihldorff says when asked about the issue of Joy-Con drift, “whether it’s a new system or an accessory, [Nintendo is] designing from the ground up to be the best possible experience for our consumers – whether it’s the immediate effect of the Joy-Cons that you’re playing, how they’re interacting with the game, or durability. They take it and rebuild it so that we can give the best possible experience.”
Stick drift plagues almost every modern controller, but it’s been a particular bane for the Switch’s original Joy-Cons. Nintendo has been repeating that “designed from the ground up” line about the Joy-Con 2s since last week, so we can only hope that, whatever changes to these sticks have been implemented, they do the job right.
Check out our guide on how to pre-order Nintendo Switch 2, or our big list of upcoming Switch 2 games.