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Nintendo Hit With Class Action Over Faulty Controllers

A law firm has filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo alleging the gaming company knowingly sold faulty controllers for its Switch consoles.

A sizeable number of the console’s detachable Joy-Con controllers have reportedly begun suffering “Joy-Con Drift”, detecting input where there is none.

The problem appears to be primarily affecting the analogue sticks, particularly on left controllers where the stick is used heavily for movement in games.

US law firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith has now filed a class action against Nintendo of America in the US District Court citing “various consumer protection statutes as well as various warranty and common law claims”.

The class action complaint alleges Nintendo knew about the defect as early as its pre-release testing, but failed to disclose the defect, continued selling the products, and refuses to repair them without charge.

The listed plaintiff Ryan Diaz claims his Joy-Con controllers began “drifting” around 11 months after he purchased his Switch console, making them “unusable for general gameplay”.

He sent it to Nintendo under warranty.

The company refurbished his controller but three months later it began “drifting” again.

A second set of Joy-Con controllers owned by Mr Diaz began exhibiting the same problems after 13 months, placing them out of the warranty period and forcing him to purchase more controllers.

The complaint alleges Switch owners “have suffered an ascertainable loss of money and/or property and/or value”.

The class action has been filed in the state of Washington, where Nintendo of America has its headquarters.

Nintendo recently announced a “lite” version of its Switch console.

It remains to be seen if this handheld only console will be met with the same problems with its analogue sticks.

Given the Switch Lite controls are not detachable, any issues will present even more of a problem for gamers, potentially forcing them to replace the whole console rather than just the controls.



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