Nintendo isn’t using anti-drift Hall effect sensors on Switch 2 joysticks - Ars Technica

But Nintendo promises "redesigned" Joy-Cons are "smoother" and "more durable."

After dealing with years of widespread reports of "stick drift" on the original Switch Joy-Cons, Nintendo watchers have been hoping the Switch 2 would make use of magnetic Hall effect sensors that avoid most of the physical wear and tear that causes the problem. Now, though, a Nintendo executive has confirmed that the Joy-Cons on the new console won't make use of the more reliable but more expensive technology.

"Well, the Joy-Con 2's controllers have been designed from the ground up," Nintendo of America Senior Vice President of Product Development & Publishing Nate Bihldorff told enthusiast site Nintendo Life in a recent interview. "They're not Hall effect sticks, but they feel really good."

The confirmation comes after Nintendo pointedly refused to offer details about the Switch 2's joystick hardware at a roundtable Q&A session attended by Ars last week. When a reporter asked whether stick drift "is the sort of thing that has been improved with the Joy-Con 2 and the Pro Controller 2 as well," Switch 2 Technical Director Tetsuya Sasaki responded (via a translator) that the "new Joy-Con 2 controllers have been designed from the ground up from scratch to have bigger movement, and also a lot smoother movement."

Since then, Nintendo had offered similarly vague responses to other outlets when asked directly about the issue. "We haven’t shared what the inner mechanisms are of those control sticks, and if I were to dive into it, it would basically be sharing the whole blueprint of the control stick," Sasaki told Polygon. "The control sticks for Joy-Con 2 controllers have been redesigned and have improved in areas such as durability," a Nintendo spokesperson told VGC.

In an "Ask the Developer" interview recently posted by Nintendo, producer Kouichi Kawamoto reiterated that the company "redesigned everything from scratch for Joy-Con 2... Compared to the Joy-Con controllers for Switch, the control sticks are larger and more durable, with smoother movement."

Without the use of Hall effect sensors (or similar magnetic technologies), though, that redesigned "smoothness" might not hold up to repeated use. On the original Switch, the drifting issue seems to be caused by metal contacts inside the board that rub up against graphite with repeated use. That wear and tear can cause debris to get caught in the sensing mechanism, leading it to have significant problems detecting when the joystick is properly centered.

The drifting issue got so bad on the Switch that Nintendo had to offer free Joy-Con replacements to anyone facing the issue. But while the Switch's small joysticks seem particularly susceptible to the problem, Xbox and PlayStation owners have also reported stick drift problems with standard controllers that don't use Hall effect sensors.

Maybe the redesigned, slightly larger sticks on the Switch 2 Joy-Cons will end up more "durable," as Nintendo says, and less susceptible to a problem that led to an unsuccessful class-action lawsuit last time around. With a Hall effect sensor now out of the question, though, we'll have to wait for more details on what's actually going on inside this "redesign" before we get our hopes up.