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Kotaku: Nintendo acknowledges Joycon connectivity issues.

Has anyone tried calling Nintendo customer service? I'm curious what they are saying. If a customer service rep started talking about aquariums I'd lose it.

I'm just wondering if they are telling people to send the joycon in or what. If it doesn't work and can't be resolved over the phone...
 
My switch is next to my wireless router, ps4, and various other wireless electronics and I'm not having the joycon issues at all. In fact I'm not having any of the issues being reported for the system...yet. Im not discounting that they don't exist but I will say that a lot of these issues may not be widespread and are likely launch kinks from faulty systems. The beta tester launch sentiments are real but to assert that this means there will be a revision in this year or even the next is clearly a crap shoot. All launch consoles have issues and are rarely perfect and I feel for people who are having a less than ideal experience with their console. I hope these issues get ironed out because zelda isn't going to make this console but all these little issues can certainly break it.
 
my issues

I don't have the box in a good position (behind the tv but visible where I am sitting). Lag on the left stick if I have the controller pointed upwards and not right at the box. Also lost movement with Link for a little bit. He moved by himself to the left.

The only other console in that area is the Wii U.
 
I'm the same.. I unplugged all wired connections and made them wireless.

My router is within inches of the switch... nothing. Ps4 is on the opposite side of the tv..
I'm not experiencing one issue.
But it still happens for others which sucks for a lot of people because the joycons are really awesome. Wiimote lites.
 
I have a bunch of wireless stuff around but I'm still alright. Definitely a weak signal tho. One additional body in Los and it goes out.

I think since there are two PCBs to power, two antennas to power in each tiny controller, with a battery that holds for 20 hours, Nintendo doesn't see this as a bug but a feature. I wouldn't hold my breath.
 
Tested mine and I seem to be a lucky one. If I completely covered both the Joycon and the Switch at distance I was able to get a tiny bit of lag on the left Joycon. Can't imagine it will be an issue at all in real world useage.

Edit: Just to be clear I meant for me, or in my case.
 
Tested mine and I seem to be a lucky one. If I completely covered both the Joycon and the Switch at distance I was able to get a tiny bit of lag on the left Joycon. Can't imagine it will be an issue at all in real world useage.

Edit: Just to be clear I meant for me, or in my case.
Yesterday mine was fine. Today it's bad.
 
See those mountains over there? You can play the Switch on them.
thats-good.gif
 
Guess where I had to put mine (while at my parent's place) when the issues started to occur? That's right, behind the TV. Sigh...
 
Yesterday mine was fine. Today it's bad.

This is going to be like PSVR drift and wobble where people try desperately to find a solution to the issue themselves, sharing anything that seemed to work. All in good faith, but most of it circumstantial and coincidental -- all while waiting for actual useful advice or updates from the manufacturer.
 
Okay, so I took both joycons to the other end of the room (4-5 meters away) and put them behind my back and tested the connectivity both in game (Zelda) and in the calibrations settings.

No issues at all that I can report. Both joycons worked perfectly fine for me. No desyncing at all.

Also, the dock is kind of behind to the left of the tv as I try to find a more permanent placement for it.
 
My left joycon gets wrecked with some of the minigames in 1-2 Switch. The razor game is impossible, tracking issues galore. I've also had a few issues when the joycons are connected to the included controller base. Hope this gets ironed out soon. Does the Pro have this issue as well?
 
I'd really love to know what's causing these issues. I never heard about problems like these with any other bluetooth controller.

I'm just glad I'm not having this problem.
 
thankfully its been 2 days and i have yet to have any issues with my joy con with my current setup im a happy switch owner. (hope it gets fixed for those having issues though)
 
FWIW, there is definitely some variance from Joycon to Joycon. The Joycons were the first thing I tested on my system, and I didn't feel like the performance was a problem (some obvious issues on controller test screen while obstructed from across the room, but otherwise fine).

Tonight I opened my extra Joycons. Performance is noticeably worse: choppier at distance, terrible signal loss when obstructed and laggy while playing Zelda from across the room.
 
My left joycon gets wrecked with some of the minigames in 1-2 Switch. The razor game is impossible, tracking issues galore. I've also had a few issues when the joycons are connected to the included controller base. Hope this gets ironed out soon. Does the Pro have this issue as well?
The Pro is fine it seems to be too week bluetooth circuits within the joycons or something like that.

As for how big of a problem it is. In my real world scenario they all work fine. Like I said, I managed to replicate the problem with some effort of moving the Switch and have it undocked closer to the router and wear an Apple Watch and cover the left joycon with my hand behind my back.
No problem at all for me in a real world scenario in other words.

But for anyone who has lots of bluetooth tech and the router nearby I guess it can be a problem just sitting as usual in the couch, some people reported an issue just by having one leg cross the other while holding the joycons in the lap.

My guess is that it's unfixable without a hardware update. Like I said long ago, I assume that we'll be able to buy an updated joycon+ later this year.
 
I'm hoping they can push firmware updates to the controllers, to increase the signal strength or whatever. I'm sitting right next to my switch and constantly have issues playing Zelda where Link will continue to move in a direction while I'm trying to move him in another. Won't be an issue whenever I get my pro controller but I really like using the joycons otherwise.
 
I'm hoping they can push firmware updates to the controllers, to increase the signal strength or whatever. I'm sitting right next to my switch and constantly have issues playing Zelda where Link will continue to move in a direction while I'm trying to move him in another. Won't be an issue whenever I get my pro controller but I really like using the joycons otherwise.

I have the exact same issue. Literally had to sit on the floor right in front of my switch with the joycon controller resting on my knees pointing towards the console. Even then, i'd still get issues. :(
 
They have to recall these. They have to. This is a massive issue.

Fix the recalled ones, refurbish them, and sell them on your storefront so you don't take a colossal financial hit.
 
My switch is basically unusable in docked mode. I have it next to my TV, and even if I am only ~ 1,5 meters away, the left joycon hardly works. This is not a "every few hours" or "I am trying to play in another room" sort of thing, I am trying to make it as optimal as possible for the Switch and still the left joycon loses connection all the time.
I'm really disappointed.
 
I've been playing with my pro controller mostly so I haven't noticed any issues but my friend who was playing bomberman with me locally reported the desync happening twice while he was playing with my joycon grip and had his legs crossed. Left joycon. The switch was on the floor maybe 5 feet away. I do have my wireless AP close and live in an apartment where many of my neighbors have 2.4Ghz Wifi APs (to the point where I actually moved almost all my stuff to a 5Ghz SSID due to occasional wifi dropouts).

Still I'm rather surprised to experience these issues (I never had problems with my Xbox one controllers desyncing and assumed this issue would be similar to that one) The transmit power on the joycon may just be too low due to the 20 hour battery life. I'd like Nintendo to patch an option to boost the signal at the expense of battery life; I don't need 20 hours and a 4-5 hour battery life similar to the DualShock 4 would be fine.
 
Finally played with my switch in the dock last night and the left joycon desynced what felt like every 5 minutes. :(

I sit pretty far from the tv(8 to 9 ft) and it does suck. Thankfully I'm almost always playing in handheld mode.
 
For me, it depends on how I'm sitting. If I cross my legs just so, it'll block the signal.

Seems like it would be easy enough to fix with a firmware update to just boost the signal coming from the left controller. Yeah, battery life will go down a bit, but I tend to swap modes more often than I anticipated, so they get plenty of chances to recharge when they're attached to the system.
 
Working fine for me playing "normally" at a fair distance. But as others said, if I position my legs with the controller nearby and block the line of sight to the Switch... That's where it gets bad.

Quite disappointed honestly, so I hope they do something. Agree that sacrificing battery life for signal strength is an acceptable solution if that does the trick. Perhaps even just a high power mode so people without issues can keep their battery?
 
For me, it depends on how I'm sitting. If I cross my legs just so, it'll block the signal.

Seems like it would be easy enough to fix with a firmware update to just boost the signal coming from the left controller. Yeah, battery life will go down a bit, but I tend to swap modes more often than I anticipated, so they get plenty of chances to recharge when they're attached to the system.

That's IF the controllers are able to be updated and also means new FCC filing.
 
For me, it depends on how I'm sitting. If I cross my legs just so, it'll block the signal.
Oh my god, and I thought I'm going crazy. When I cross my legs (it doesn't really matter which one over which), I have major issues (about 3-4ft away from the Switch). If I put my legs down again, all is fine (for the most part). It's so weird.
 
I exchanged my extra Joycons today and after a brief test, the replacements work much better (on par with the ones included in my system).

I do hope they can make an across the board fix, but it does make me (*not an engineer) wonder whether there's a manufacturing issue at play, either with a crappy batch of Bluetooth chips or the battery that powers it.

EDIT: I do think people are probably getting bum Joycons in some cases (like me), but it would be nice to see them boost the signal across the board, either way, if that's possible. Because they do seem a bit susceptible to interference.
 
I found placing a tinfoil shield behind the Switch helped with the connectivity issues for me. Doesn't look the greatest though.
 
Oh my god, and I thought I'm going crazy. When I cross my legs (it doesn't really matter which one over which), I have major issues (about 3-4ft away from the Switch). If I put my legs down again, all is fine (for the most part). It's so weird.

What if you had a boner?
 
I've been having issues in Zelda. Link either fails to respond to my inputs, or keeps going in direction after I've taken my thumb off the stick. He's run off a cliff to his death more than once. I'm hoping the pro controller fixes this.
 
The console is unplayable for me with the left joycon. The left one simply doesn't work unless I'm 4 ft or less away (its flawless at that point). The right one works fine all the time. How can a console launch like this?

Is there any chance this can be fixed with an update or is it definitely hardware?
 
My switch is next to my wireless router, ps4, and various other wireless electronics and I'm not having the joycon issues at all. In fact I'm not having any of the issues being reported for the system...yet. Im not discounting that they don't exist but I will say that a lot of these issues may not be widespread and are likely launch kinks from faulty systems. The beta tester launch sentiments are real but to assert that this means there will be a revision in this year or even the next is clearly a crap shoot. All launch consoles have issues and are rarely perfect and I feel for people who are having a less than ideal experience with their console. I hope these issues get ironed out because zelda isn't going to make this console but all these little issues can certainly break it.



This. Well said and I'm not the same camp. I and 4 friends/aquaintances who have a Switch haven't had any of these issues, but I don't doubt they exist. As always, minority with complaints shout far louder that majority without. It's difficult to guage how widespread any issue actually is.

Reminds me of PS4 launch with Wobblegate and the shoddy HDMI ports. Thise issues certainly existed, but they were nowhere near as widespread as was being made out.
 
Guys, I appreciate hearing from all you people that don't have this problem. But some of us DO, and the issue is extremely frustrating.

You think I want to have a console with wireless controllers for which I have to always be concerned about line-of-sight?

If I sit cross legged, my leg gets in the way of my controller and Link runs off a cliff. If I put my feet up my coffee table with the controller in my lap, my feet get in the way and the map spazzes out. I'm not exaggerating.

I'm also about 6 feet away from the console at all times.

I wish Nintendo all the success in the world with this console, but I want them to fix this issue so I can just enjoy my $400 CDN purchase without sitting straight up like a sailor on my couch at all times, like I can with every other wireless controller I've owned. Yes, that's how bad it is.

Widespread or not, Nintendo needs to make this right. People aren't sharing these issues because they want Switch to fail. They want it to be as good as possible, and staying silent will solve nothing.
 
My left joycon is noticeably weaker than the right, but it's not unusable for most circumstances I would think. It could definitely use some improvement though and I'll have to stick to using the pro controller if I want to play using my projector.

Using the calibration screen at my normal seating distance ~25 feet away from the console the left is mostly ok but if I put up my leg or put the right joycon near it, I lose it completely. If I play on the tv instead of the projector and am 10-15 feet away from the console it's solid regardless of what I do to it. The dock is behind a closet door and there is a wall in between to give some context.
 
My switch is next to my wireless router, ps4, and various other wireless electronics and I'm not having the joycon issues at all. In fact I'm not having any of the issues being reported for the system...yet. Im not discounting that they don't exist but I will say that a lot of these issues may not be widespread and are likely launch kinks from faulty systems. The beta tester launch sentiments are real but to assert that this means there will be a revision in this year or even the next is clearly a crap shoot. All launch consoles have issues and are rarely perfect and I feel for people who are having a less than ideal experience with their console. I hope these issues get ironed out because zelda isn't going to make this console but all these little issues can certainly break it.

I also have no issues. Even from 14 feet back, put my joycon hand behind a wall, behind my back, no issues. System has an xbox one s, cable box, modem, all within 2 feet of it.

Must be hardware specific, right?
 
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