Nintendo Releases Official Statement On Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Desync Issue

Nintendo says it has fixed the connectivity issue some Switch owners are experiencing on the left Joy-Con controller, and said the problem will not appear in future consoles that make it into consumer’s hands.

Nintendo has spoken, claiming issues relating to Left JoyCon connectivity are not the result of a “design issue”, but actually a simple case of “manufacturing variation“. Nintendo has isolated the “manufacturing variation” and it has now been corrected at “factory level”. Many players, us included, were finding that when playing the console in its TV mode, the left Joy-Con controller would occasionally drop its connection and stop working completely.

Of course, Nintendo isn’t calling it a “problem” or any other word which might have a negative connotation. We want our consumers to get up and running quickly to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we encourage them to contact Nintendo’s Consumer Service team.

Nintendo says it’ll offer free repairs with about a one-week turnaround time for any left Joy-Con units that are seeing connection issues.

It’s unknown how Nintendo is handling this issue entirely. There’s no guarantee that they will determine there is an actual problem, but if they do you can send it to them for an easy fix, which apparently just involves a small piece of foam.

In a March 9 statement to TIME, Nintendo said the number of Joy-Con replacement or fix requests was “not significant”, adding that the number was also “consistent with what we’ve seen for any new hardware we have launched”.

CNET sent a defective controller to Nintendo for the fix.

Although sales have been good, and the the new Zelda is one of the best launch titles in the history of launch titles, that doesn’t mean that the Nintendo Switch launch was without issues.

CNET believes this is a “a piece of conductive foam” treated with either nickel, copper or both which is said to keep electronics from encountering radio-frequency interference.