A patent filed by Nintendo suggests that they’re working on Hall Effect style joysticks for the Switch 2 that would eliminate stick drift almost entirely.

  • MentalEdge
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    3210 months ago

    Fucking finally. Still have to see if they actually go through with it.

    • @[email protected]
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      510 months ago

      Seriously…idk why they are so…obtuse to fixing shiz sometimes. Granted we are talking about the same company that won’t embrace fan work the same as Sega so they’re kinda backwards imo. Esp since that stuff usually isn’t making money or is free promo for the real shiz Ala streaming and reviews. They’re not very smart imo on a lot of things and seem to punish fans for having fun with shiz too much…

      • MentalEdge
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        10 months ago

        Nintendo is absolutely one of those companies that has been breathing its own farts for too long.

        A part of me is worried that they will patent this, and then just sit on the tech forever, and kill hall-effect joysticks for good.

        • @[email protected]
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          710 months ago

          I mean I doubt it. Hall effects have been on the market for ages(notably the dreamcast as a few other comments reminded me). They can’t possibly stop hall effects and mods that allow them at this point XD

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          You can patent a specific implementation of a technology, but not usually the principles behind that tech. Nintendo had patented this, too, but that likely has little to no effect on other hall effect joystick manufacturers.

  • Björn Tantau
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    10 months ago

    I still wonder what was so special about my N64 joysticks that I never experienced drifting. They’d recalibrate every time you turned the console on (or held some key combination) and after that were golden.

    • @[email protected]
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      1610 months ago

      Yeah, except they were also so horribly designed that normal use literally grinds away the plastic at the base of the stick until it starts flopping around like a wet noodle.

    • @SailorMoss
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      10 months ago

      The N64 used optical sensors in its joysticks. If you take apart the N64 joystick you’ll see the joystick is attached to some disks with slits in them. The N64 had an optical sensor that would count how many slits passed by.

      Here is a GIF demonstrating the mechanism.

  • @notamechanic321
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    410 months ago

    Gulikit already beat them to the punch! 10 quid for a pair of new joysticks on Amazon.

    Repair don’t replace!

  • @[email protected]
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    10 months ago

    It would be 100% possible for game devs to include an option to mitigate drift (require the stick to be pushed at least ~x% to move at all, adjustable anywhere from 10 for slight drift to 50 for extreme cases). Haven’t seen the slightest effort nor heard a peep on that.

    Bunch of people in the replies seemingly never tried to play puzzle games with drift and have no idea how much trouble it can cause. Do the puzzles in The Last Campfire with joycon drift and let me know how it goes.

    • @PM_ME_FEET_PICS
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      2610 months ago

      That’s not a valid option. 50% is terrible for joystick dead zone and is considered poor quality.

      • @fartsparkles
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        1110 months ago

        As a Steam Deck user, even the thought of a 50% dead zone makes me nauseous.

        • @priapus
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          710 months ago

          It makes way more sense for that to be an OS level option, not per game. It also makes even more sense to have hall effect joysticks and avoid the problem entirely.