While Nintendo is absolutely to blame for not fixing the situation, I’ve heard they were not going for hall effect sticks because of the interference with the joycons magnets.
Full disclosure, I have no Switch, Retrodeck Enthusiast here 😁
I design things that use hall effect sensors… The magnets in the joycons would not have interfered. Those magnets are:
Too far away from the sticks to matter.
Perpendicular/orthogonal to the magnets that would be in the sticks.
Besides, you can cram hall effect stuff super tight just by inserting a tiny piece of magnetic shielding between components. Loads of products do this (mostly to prevent outside magnets from interfering but it’s the same concept). What is this magic magnetic shielding technology? EMI tape.
There’s a zillion types and they’re all cheap and very widely used in manufacturing. I guarantee your phone, laptop, and many other electronics you own have some sort of EMI tape inside of them.
Just about every assembly line that exists for mass produced electronics has at least one machine that spits out tape a bit like a CNC machine (or they pay the cheapest worker possible to place it).
So they decided that magnetic joycons versus a new rail design were worth another set of drift lawsuits.
Because any potential new drift lawsuit is going to cite the old one as clear proof that Nintendo knew what would happen, had the opportunity to change the design so it didn’t, and decided to do it again anyway.
Nintendo choosing the option that is actively worse for everyone including themselves goes well with my theory that Nintendo is actually just evil and making decisions based on spite and disdain for their customers and fans.
The joycon connection isn’t the only use of magnets I believe. The steam deck has a bunch of magnets too and it’s the reason Valve didn’t include Hall effect sticks in that device. They did a bunch of field tests and found that they created more problems than they solved. Folks who’ve modded their ROG Ally with HES reported similar issues. It just seems like with the current tech they’re just not compatible with handheld consoles.
While Nintendo is absolutely to blame for not fixing the situation, I’ve heard they were not going for hall effect sticks because of the interference with the joycons magnets.
Full disclosure, I have no Switch, Retrodeck Enthusiast here 😁
I design things that use hall effect sensors… The magnets in the joycons would not have interfered. Those magnets are:
Besides, you can cram hall effect stuff super tight just by inserting a tiny piece of magnetic shielding between components. Loads of products do this (mostly to prevent outside magnets from interfering but it’s the same concept). What is this magic magnetic shielding technology? EMI tape.
There’s a zillion types and they’re all cheap and very widely used in manufacturing. I guarantee your phone, laptop, and many other electronics you own have some sort of EMI tape inside of them.
Just about every assembly line that exists for mass produced electronics has at least one machine that spits out tape a bit like a CNC machine (or they pay the cheapest worker possible to place it).
Thanks for the thorough explanation!
Then it’s a mystery why the didn’t use Hall effect joysticks. It the cost of the part so much more expensive?
So they decided that magnetic joycons versus a new rail design were worth another set of drift lawsuits.
Because any potential new drift lawsuit is going to cite the old one as clear proof that Nintendo knew what would happen, had the opportunity to change the design so it didn’t, and decided to do it again anyway.
Nintendo choosing the option that is actively worse for everyone including themselves goes well with my theory that Nintendo is actually just evil and making decisions based on spite and disdain for their customers and fans.
Bruh, go touch some grass.
The joycon connection isn’t the only use of magnets I believe. The steam deck has a bunch of magnets too and it’s the reason Valve didn’t include Hall effect sticks in that device. They did a bunch of field tests and found that they created more problems than they solved. Folks who’ve modded their ROG Ally with HES reported similar issues. It just seems like with the current tech they’re just not compatible with handheld consoles.