Switch 2 Joy Con
Image: Nintendo

As part of yesterday's Ask the Developer Vol. 16 Nintendo Switch 2, the console's designers were asked a whole bunch of in-depth questions about various technical aspects of their new baby.

One of the more interesting parts of the interview was when they discussed redesigning the Switch, and all of its component parts, from scratch.

Now, we all know how bothersome the Joy-Con stick drift situation was, and has continued to be over the years. It's not something that ever really got solved very neatly, and so we found ourselves immediately gravitating towards part two of this interview, where Kouichi Kawamoto, the Switch 2's producer, is asked about the Joy-Con specifically, he responds;

"We 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. We’ve also made Joy-Con 2 bigger to match the larger console.
If we simply stretched Switch system's Joy-Con vertically, they'd end up being very difficult to hold, as your fingers wouldn’t be able to reach the L and R Buttons and they wouldn’t fit the shape of your palms. That’s why we lengthened the L and R Buttons, rounded off the bottom corners, and experimented with various placements of the control sticks and buttons, right down to the millimeter or less, to arrive at the shape and layout we have now."

On the sticks themselves, as Kawamoto says, they are better, more durable. However, there is still no concrete answer on whether or not Hall-effect sticks - that's some real fancy sticks, if you're not au fait - the exact type fans have been begging for, have made the cut in these new controllers. Kawamoto was very enthusiastic about the new Pro controller's sticks too, saying they were much more "smooth-gliding".

However, we will, of course, need to wait until we get our hands on the console and its controllers for ourselves to know for sure, but redesigning something from the ground up and leaving its biggest, and most glaring, issue un-fixed. Surely not suited to the Nintendo seal of approval!

Do you think the overhaul of the Joy-Con controllers will lead to the end of Stick Drift? Let us know!