Joysticks: Probably Still Drifty
Joy-Con joysticks use a potentiometer to read the voltage at a wiper that slides across a strip of resistive material. That material wears down over time, or plastic and dust can dirty the sensors.
Stick drift is a huge problem with other Switch models. One survey found that 40% of Switch owners had problems with their Joy-Cons drifting, and things didn’t get any better with the Lite or OLED editions. After a bunch of lawsuits, Nintendo’s president even admitted it and apologized, setting up a free repair program for customers in some parts of the world.
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Why fix something that is making you even more money?!
But the invisible hand!
Exactly this. Lots of companies have figured out that filling our landfills with cheap plastic crap is a lucrative business model. In this case, it’s cheaply made and expensive to replace - making it hugely profitable. Shareholders would be furious if they were to fix this issue.
I like how they raised the price on the controllers and only used magnets for a non-issue and not for the thing that is the problem.
Eh, those rails were a huge issue over time for people who primarily used their switches in handheld but did swap/remove joycons semi-regularly. My launch model (that I ended up giving to a friend’s kid when I got my Steam Deck) would often need me to attach and detach the right joycon a few times to make it fully register that it was connected.
But yeah. Tinfoil hat and all but a LOT of speculation is that the magnetic based connection is to prevent hall effect aftermarket sticks from working since those are also magnetic. TMR isn’t impacted by that but the vast majority of folk would have never considered TMR for a gamepad until the past year or two.
And the deluded fucks still charge more than US$250 for their half-a-console. It’s got good processing power and stellar shell construction, but charging the same price Xbox and PlayStation do for their full entertainment consoles, for a handheld main with the same defect-prone joysticks, tiny battery, stickers for the Joy-Con socket decal, plastic screen and 1080p display? In 2025?
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Tears of the Kingdom is one of the best games ever made, shame they keep it exclusive though.
Emulators play it better than on original hardware 🤷
I disagree, and I think open world games are basically the cheapest way to pump a game out. Game development has stagnated, and basically, everything Nintendo releases is a testament to that. Indie games are basically the only realm in which real game design is happening.
While I’m not a huge fan of BotW and TotK, I think it’s a disservice to say they were a cheap way to pump out games. You can see the design intent in both exploration and gameplay mechanics. There’s a lot that works well in those games that allows for the player to continue playing for a while and still have fun.
And this is probably the only time I’d be seen defending those games.
I don"t know if it’s in question that open world isn’t the cheapest way to make a game. It really is. You can make a series of discrete challenges without really needing to take time to consider context or even put any set pieces together. You create mechanics, and you let players create their own fun. I will concede that I am MOSTLY disparaging BOTW.
I would disagree with this sentiment on a basic game design level. I don’t know about the Zelda games, I didn’t care enough about BotW to play more than a few hours, but designing a large map that incorporates multiple biomes in a believable way is much more difficult than creating a bunch of smaller levels that don’t have to have any relation to each other in the slightest. You can get away with a lot more in terms of map geometry and set pieces when you load into each level individually.
This is obviously different when you’re talking about Bethesda-style load into every building style environments vs Elden Ring “You see that castle in the distance? You’ll be going in there eventually” design, but the fact that Bethesda makes their interiors separate from the rest of the world is how they cheap out on their games. It’s less hardware intensive and you can cheat a lot more in your design. And on a gameplay level that goes for Ubisoft-style collectathon map objects (and Zelda shrines in this case), but that’s not unique to open-world games - it’s a lazy cop-out that game devs have used forever to pad out their games. Collecting all the secret skulls in Halo is the same thing, but because it’s implemented well and doesn’t drag on forever with no reward like most open-world collectibles, it feels totally different.