Animal crossing and Joycon drift

[Kas.uma]

So, my drifting problems started I would say around May. At first it was the character taking 1 or 2 steps forward without any input, but it worsened to the point where I wasn't able to move down at all, I could only go up or stop moving.

Since I don't really want to waste money on another joycon (that is bound to drift anyway... ugh Nintendo why!) I stopped playing Animal Crossing. The interesting thing is that in other game, while still present, the drift is less noticeable! I barely played during September and October (only logged to do the Halloween event), but everything went smoothly until now.

And then I just recalled: every time I would stop or play less, the drift got less noticebale... Is anyone going through a similar situation?

 

[Livia]

I play everyday, so my drift just kept getting worse. My character would walk across the island all by herself.
You can send your joycon in for repair and nintendo will replace it for free. It took about 2 weeks for them to send me my new one. I just got it back yesterday.

 

[Plainbluetees]

My right Joycon started to drift in September. These were the joycons that came with my switch. It wasn’t noticeable until the buttons died and the only way the right joycon would function would be the thumb stick... didn’t want to wait forever so I just bought new ones and the work much better.

 

[Blood Eclipse]

May this never happen to me.
The most I notice at the moment is an occasional input lag when I try running and sometimes walking. I hope that isn't the start of the drift nightmare I've been reading a lot about with Nintendo and their Switches.

 

[Tiffkaboo]

I've only had my switch for about a month so I don't have much to add. I have experienced this, but only slightly so. My joy con would stop responding for 3-4 seconds and the lights would flash on the side, but eventually it would work again. I haven't had it happen lately thank goodness (knock on wood), but it is pretty annoying when it does happen.

May this never happen to me.
The most I notice at the moment is an occasional input lag when I try running and sometimes walking. I hope that isn't the start of the drift nightmare I've been reading a lot about with Nintendo and their Switches.

I read about that too! I agree, It's very scary to think that could happen.

 

[EmmaFrost]

I have only really noticed joy con drift when I'm in my house. I hope I don't start noticing it other places too!

 

[Mr_Persona]

I don't have the same problem because my joycons only started to drift because a sister threw them 3 times. So my first set of joy cons will always be terrible. But that is good news for you that they're less worse when less using them. I did had one bowser controller that was a pro one but not the wireless one. And it was a gift to my other sister, and after awhile she used it a lot for Fortnite. But she did messed up the controller by pressing it too hard ruffly on the thumbsticks and slaming it. But after a year went by, l had to use the controller and it worked better than before! Right now it's still little broken but it works and not many problems when moving the character around or camera.

 

[Aardbei]

I saw you are from Italy. I don't know if they do that in Italy but in France we can send our joycon to the Nintendo France after-sales services and they fix the joycon drift for free even if it's not under guarantee anymore

 

[RockAddict410]

So I don’t have Joycon brand controllers but I have the “Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild” edition of controller and I even have stick drift and I’ve read on here that Nintendo has a class action lawsuit for this exact reason, I sincerely hope they get their butts handed to them in court because this is unacceptable for a company like them to have such fragile hardware

 

[BetsySundrop]

Just a suggestion, IF you have another controller, use that. I use the pro controller (mostly to avoid the seemingly inevitable drift issues). Works great, and is way more comfortable.

 

[Dunquixote]

I have a switch lite and had it since the end of may. I don’t know when it started for me and wasn’t even sure that I was experiencing it. I noticed though i would see my character move or exiting a place after i enter it either because i bumped my control stick lightly or even without that sometimes. Not sure if there is a solution for switch lites. it’s a minor annoyance anyways but I still shouldn’t be having any problems this early :/

 

[Bilaz]

I’ d been avoiding using my beautiful ACNH joycons for this exact reason
No issues yet on my red/blue joycons though

 

[CodyMKW]

just get Pro Controller sure those can also drift but there are way way less cases of them drifting

 

[thatawkwardkid]

I experienced joy-con drift before New Horizons came out when I was playing other games but what I did was I ended up buying a new joy-con. This is not the best advice if you're on a budget though.

 

[Yarbo]

Hey I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, I just popped into this thread to mention this quick.

They sell replacement joy sticks on Amazon. I bought a little kit for like $10? It's surprisingly easy to take apart your joy con and replace the joystick. Put the screws back in and it's good as new! Save yourself a boatload of many. I repaired 4 Joy cons that I thought were toast!

 

[littlewing]

i'm sorry to hear that the drifting got so bad! that sounds like it would suck all the fun out of playing. i've yet to experience joycon drift myself, but i'm constantly anxious about the possibility. the store i bought my switch from has gone out of business, so i'm not even sure who i should contact if the need ever arises to have it repaired.

while we're on this topic, has anyone had to send in a switch lite to be fixed for drift-issues? i have a switch lite and i'm worried that getting it fixed (if i'm able to) would result in data loss...

 

[RETSAMDET]

I’m on my third set of joycons now. I haven’t had a chance to send in the prior two sets for repair. Drift really bothers me, so I stopped using the affected joycons while the issue was still relatively mild.

With my first set, I noticed issues work Link randomly walking forward in BOTW. With my second set, I had issues with my ACNH character moving forward unexpectedly, which made it hard to do anything requiring precision. The larger issue was that the cursor would move in dialogue issues. I didn’t want to risk telling an animal to move inadvertently, so I switched to joycon pair 3, leaving the old ones for multiplayer use or backup.

Both times, the issues came on fairly suddenly, and started to escalate fairly quickly.

 

[Monokuma73]

I've only had my switch for about a month so I don't have much to add. I have experienced this, but only slightly so. My joy con would stop responding for 3-4 seconds and the lights would flash on the side, but eventually it would work again. I haven't had it happen lately thank goodness (knock on wood), but it is pretty annoying when it does happen.

Me and my GF having Switch since August 2020, we not experiencing any drifts so far (both Switches bought in UK, versions with improved batteries) but same problem is existing as you described. My GF playing only ACNH, but I'm playing Zelda Link's Awakening and Dragon Quest Builders (first one) - and didn't experienced this problem in those games... maybe, because there's no vibrations in those games?

 

[Starboard]

@luckytrait I also want to know this. With my terrible luck with technology I'm actually expecting my Lite to start drifting. I worry about it every time I play and already started considering what I'll do when it happens lol. Why Nintendo why

 

[Monokuma73]

Why Nintendo why

This is a good question... over years I collected significant amount of Nintendo consoles and still have GameBoy Color with working condition, despite its age! Controlling GBC is not as perfect as before, but I can understand this after all of those years. On the top of this, I have GBA and GBA SP in perfect working order with no problem with steering whatsoever. I'm not so sure about NDS as my distant family has it currently and can't tell much about condition. My 3DS working perfectly, Wii and WiiU - with original controllers never broke for me. I trusted so far for Nintendo quality, but it looks like recent Switches having quality issues. So sad.