Every controversy, doubt and debate about the Nintendo Switch

In the seven years since its release, the Nintendo Switch has become a beloved piece of hardware. Not only is it Nintendo’s best-selling console, it’s also one of the most popular consoles of all time. It is also the console that boosted Nintendo’s reputation after the poor reception of the Wii U. In 2021, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé said, looking back at the Switchsaid it was a ‘make or break’ console for Nintendo.

But behind the rose-colored glasses of the Switch’s success is Nintendo has facing its share of controversies. Since 2017, Nintendo has been criticized for various issues related to the Switch system, such as Joy-Con drift, the launch of Wii U ports, and hardware shortages. In anticipation of Nintendo’s next-generation console, which is sure to spark plenty of new discussion, let’s take a look back at some of the controversies surrounding the original Switch.

Nintendo Switch shortages

No, I’m not talking about the 2020 Switch shortage, when the console suddenly became almost impossible to find. Nintendo also faced a Switch shortage when the system released in 2017. People have long accused Nintendo of deliberately creating shortages of its products to increase demand, and the Switch was no different. Nintendo sold nearly 2.8 million consoles in its first month of sales in March 2017, and said at the time that it planned to have an additional 10 million units available by the end of that fiscal year. Nintendo vastly underestimated how many people wanted a Switch.

It became so hard to find that Nintendo had to make a statement about this was not on purpose. Charlie Scibetta, Nintendo’s senior director of corporate communications, told Ars Technica in June 2017 that Nintendo had no deliberate plan “in terms of short-circuiting the market.” The company was making consoles as fast as it could, he said.

“We expected there would be a demand for it, but the demand was even greater than we thought,” Scibetta said. “We had a good amount for the launch. (…) Unfortunately, we are currently in a situation where, as quickly as it hits the stores, it is snapped up. It is a nice problem, but we are working hard to meet the demand.”

Tony Bartel, former Chief Operations Officer of GameStop said in March 2017 that he expected shortages to continue throughout the year. A Financial Times report in May 2017 suggested that Nintendo management was pushing to release 18 million units by March 2018, increasing the previous figure of 10 million. Nintendo worked hard to ensure there was enough stock for the holidays.

Too many Wii U ports

Around the time the Switch launched, and well into the years after, it was hard to ignore the cries of people angry that there were too many Wii U ports. People were angry for different reasons, one of them was that people who owned the Wii U version would have to re-purchase it to play it on Switch. (And often this one games were just as expensive the second time.) For a while, people felt like there were too many Wii U ports and not enough exclusives, although the number of games released didn’t support that claim. Nintendo released more than a dozen games on Switch in 2017, only three of which were ports.

The point is, the Wii U didn’t sell well, which meant there were a lot of Wii U games that people simply didn’t play; it made sense for Nintendo to port this to the Nintendo Switch just to get more games into players’ hands. Nintendo has continued to port games from Wii U to Switch as the years passed, but it always felt additive rather than taking resources away from new game development. However, the most valid part of this controversy is that people have had to pay full price to buy games for the second time.

Joy-Con drift and other controller issues

Nintendo Switch players have been battling Joy-Con drift for years. What is Joy-Con drift? It’s when your controller activates with a false input, meaning your controller moves your character or cursor on the screen without you pressing anything. It affects the joysticks, and it does terribly annoying. Many Switch players have had crucial moments destroyed by drift. Nintendo has never actually said why Joy-Con drift happens, but it is speculated that this is due to worn internal parts. Nintendo knows it’s a problem: Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized for “any issues caused” to customers regarding the Joy-Cons.

Nintendo Switch players have filed lawsuits against Nintendo over the Joy-Con problem. The cases were thrown away or forced into arbitration. The company is now offering free repairs to affected controllers. The big problem with the Nintendo Switch Lite is that if you encounter Joy-Con drift, you can’t simply replace your controllers. Nintendo also released an updated OLED version of the Nintendo Switch in 2021, but it still has a Joy-Con drift – something Nintendo says is “inevitable” due to regular wear and tear.

Finally, Nintendo was also sued by video game peripheral maker Gamevice, which claimed that Nintendo had violated its patents on a device called Wikipad. The court ruled against Gameviceand Nintendo won the lawsuit And the United States Trade Commission investigation that resulted. The Gamevice device looks a bit like the Nintendo Switch, but there are major differences that separate the two.

Photo: Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images

Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack / Virtual Console

Nintendo Switch Online is required for people who want to play online multiplayer games on the Switch; it costs $19.99 per year, $7.99 every three months, or $3.99 per month. That hasn’t necessarily been the problem; the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack does. It’s basically the higher-end version of the original service, offering everything the original does, plus some classic video games for the price of $49.99. It also provides access to expansion content such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘Happy Home Paradise DLC. When the subscription service launched in 2021, people were immediately upset about the quality of the emulation. It wasn’t good enough to support the $30 price increase. That, plus the fact that if you canceled the subscription you would lose access to the DLC, infuriated fans.

It’s still not something Nintendo Switch players are excited about, but as games have been added its value has become more apparent. To put it another way, it’s not a virtual console, which was a popular way for people to play old Nintendo games on the Wii, Wii U, and Nintendo 3DS. At launch, and for much of the Nintendo Switch’s life, Nintendo Switch Online’s archive of classic games was and has remained limited; there have been plenty of Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System games, but Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games didn’t hit the market until 2021, while Game Boy games weren’t available until 2023. Nintendo fans think it’s a failure on both a consumer level – let’s just buy these games! – and as an inability to preserve games, especially as Nintendo takes down its old eShop stores.

Save data transfers and backups

The Nintendo Switch had no way to back up or transfer data at launch. For example, you couldn’t (and still can’t!) put saved data on a microSD card. The Switch provided (and does) provide expandable storage for games that use the microSD slot, but there’s no point in storing data, which is only stored on the hardware itself. Previously, cartridge-based games used the cartridges themselves to store data, but that doesn’t apply to the Switch. If you used up your save data on the console, things had to be deleted.

I’m sure it’s easy to see why this is a problem: if you lose or break your Switch, you’re out of luck. People were surprised to discover this before the Switch’s launch, as copying save files was something that was easily available on the Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and Wii U. It’s something that fans were upset about, as it was quite simple to do elsewhere, such as on PlayStation and Xbox. (Xbox backs up saves to the cloud, while PlayStation lets you pay for the cloud but save games to USB storage for free.)

Of course, that is no longer the case. you can Now transfer your save data to a new Nintendo Switch console; Nintendo updated its console with this feature in 2019. However, you still can’t put storage on microSD cards.