The Switch’s Joy-Cons are having some issues staying connected

Nintendo’s Switch is now a week away from launch, but media outlets internationally have been messing with their own consoles for longer than that now. yesterday the embargo on some preview coverage dropped, flooding the internet with thoughts on initial setup and overall functionality of the new console. And amongst all the praise, there were some dark spots. Most of which focused on the Switch’s Joy Cons – and their tendency to act up at times.

Polygon noted the issue with their left Joy-Con, stating that the controllers sometimes desynched with the console and caused some grief in Breath of the Wild.

“Over the course of my time with Breath of the Wild, I’ve had repeated problems with the left Joy-Con controller partially or even completely losing sync from the Switch console while docked and connected to my television. This is a pain in the ass at best, but has also resulted in several deaths playing Breath of the Wild.”

This was echoed by Jason Schreier of Kotaku, who also noted the issue being limited to the left controller.

Yep, my left JoyCon desynchronizes as I’m playing. Gonna be a big problem if they can’t fix this with a firmware update! https://t.co/aCf2K0jOz2

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) 23 February 2017

IGN’s Jose Otero stated the same, and soon many outlets were either re-iterating the point or attempting to reproduce a problem they had not experienced.

I’ve played roughly 20 hours of Zelda and it’s happened 2-3 times. https://t.co/5sGBotcIjG

— Jose Otero (@jose_otero) 23 February 2017

GameXplain wanted to get to the root of the issue though, and in the process found that the issue was not in fact limited to one half of the control scheme. It seems that given a little distance between the controllers and the Switch itself, obstructions between the two tend to break some of the synchronisation. The video below shows the controller being covered with a hand or used behind your back, both of which were able to reproduce the issues that were being reported on. And with both halves too.

The question now is whether Nintendo can fix this. They’ve already made it clear that a firmware patch should address the issue at launch, but the video above seems to make it clear that the issue is more hardware related. Until that update hits though there’s no real way of knowing if it’ll help, which doesn’t help anyone planning to pick up a Switch at launch.

That’s if it’s a dire issue at all. Of all the reports, most only seemed to experience the problem a handful of times over extended periods of use. It’s still annoying, but it’s not as dire as it would initially seem. Still, it’s something Nintendo should do their best to figure out soon.

Last Updated: February 24, 2017