The launch of the Nintendo Switch in China has been undeniably successful. The Chinese market gobbled up 50,000 of the portable consoles on launch day. Although, despite this success, Nintendo has a problem. The JoyCons for the Switch seem to be suffering from the same manufacturing defaults in China as they do in the rest of the world.
The infamous JoyCon drift issues have unfortunately been reported in the Chinese block of consoles as well. This issue, which has been known for months to users in various markets, sees the responsiveness of the JoyCon drop over time as inputs are increasingly inaccurate in broken controllers. And now, Chinese gamers are feeling the pain.
Based on a report from NintendoLife, a complaint was recently shared on the Weibo social media site. Said complaint included the story of one such user who reported the now infamous drift problem with their console, having been purchased from online retailer JD.com. The buyer reached out to the retailer, who told them that the behavior is due to imported games, not a hardware fault.
The original post, translated roughly from the original language says, “I talked to customer service and they told me the behavior of Joy-Cons are not guaranteed on import games and that I should test with New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe. Utter nonsense.”
Of course, Nintendo has already acknowledged that this is an issue with Switch consoles all over the world. And we know for a fact that it’s a hardware problem, as Nintendo has been offering free repair or replacement for some time for broken JoyCons. The solution came after Nintendo was slapped with a class-action lawsuit over the drift, claiming that the company wasn’t doing enough to address widespread customer concerns.
At the time the news of the issue first being acknowledged broke, widespread commentary on statements made by Nintendo to various outlets was reported. Specifically, Nintendo said the following:
“Our goal is always, always to create quality products, and products that ensure gamers are having a great experience,” Nintendo said. “We are continuously looking at ways to improve our products as we go forward, but in the end we want consumers to have a great experience. And if in any case they’re not having that experience, we encourage them to contact our customer support groups and we’ll do our best to help them through that. That has been how we’ve been handling our consumers over the last few months as issues like this have arisen, and we believe that consumers are finding their way back to great gameplay experiences.”
So as Nintendo continues to offer JoyCon repairs for many users, it remains to be seen if the issues are as common in China as they are in other areas, and what Nintendo and retailers in the country are going to do about the problems.
