Nintendo claims that it has built better, nicer controllers to help avoid stick drift on the Switch 2, and that it’s made the new console’s eShop snappier and easier to use. But the company’s answers haven’t fully convinced me that we shouldn’t be worried as we approach the Switch 2's launch on June 5.
In a roundtable interview with press about the upcoming console, Nintendo Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto was asked about the console’s eShop and he made it clear that using the digital storefront should be a great experience, like it was back on the Wii.
“Maybe this is a little bit controversial, but in terms of applications on the Wii, I probably booted the Wii shopping channel the most out of any application,” said Kawamoto, as reported by Eurogamer who attended the roundtable event. Kotaku wasn’t invited.
“So when it comes to the eShop, I wanted to make sure that it was a smooth experience, that the scrolling of the list doesn’t stop, that it’s very smooth, pages load fast. These are all requests that I made to the team in great detail and great amounts.”
Switch 2 technical director Tetsuya Sasaki says that the team worked really hard to “make Mr. Kawamoto happy,” including the various people who worked on the console’s network service, server apps, software, and more.
This sounds great, and is a much-needed improvement over the old Switch. Trying to navigate that console’s eShop is about as fun as pulling teeth. Things take forever to load, menus are unresponsive, and the shop is filled with garbage. And while it sounds like you’ll still have to navigate through awful slop to buy games you care about, at least you can speed by the crap you don’t care about faster on Switch 2. Lovely.
Of course, the topic of stick drift also came up during the roundtable. Since basically day one, the Switch has suffered from Joy-Con sticks drifting and becoming hard to use as a result. This has led to a lot of costly repairs for Nintendo and damaged the console’s reputation. So I was really hoping for a better answer when Nintendo was asked about this big problem and if the Switch 2 would avoid it. That’s not what we got.
“As you may have witnessed and felt, the new Joy-Con 2 controllers for the Nintendo Switch 2 have been really designed from the ground up from scratch, and they have been designed to have bigger movement and smoother movement,” said Switch 2 hardware design lead Tetsuya Sasaki.
So the controllers are better and totally new. That’s nice. But it doesn’t answer the question. You’d like to think, after all the headaches Nintendo dealt with during the Switch’s lifespan, that stick drift would be a big priority for the company on its next console. And this answer, along with some patents, seems to indicate that it is working to make sure the issue doesn’t return for Switch 2. But for now, we’ll have to wait until Switch 2 arrives in June to see if the new and improved Joy-Cons avoid the dreaded drift.
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