Nintendo: ‘There are no widespread technical problems’ with Switch

Joy Con syncing and screen scratching problems reported online are not symptomatic of problems with the Switch hardware, Nintendo has claimed.

Speaking to Time, the platform holder has for the first time responded to the growing reports of manufacturing or design problems with the machine.

At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we want our consumers to have a positive experience,” a company statement said. It is common with any new innovative consumer technology for consumers to have questions, and Nintendo Switch is no exception.

There are no widespread technical problems, and all issues are being handled promptly, including the reports regarding the left Joy-Con Bluetooth connection. To best support our customers, we continuously update the online consumer support site and provide real-time answers to the questions we are receiving. We want our consumers to get up and running quickly to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we encourage them to contact Nintendo’s Consumer Service team.

Regarding Joy Cons, the company added: "The number [of Joy-Con replacement or repair requests received] is not significant, and is consistent with what we’ve seen for any new hardware we have launched."

The statement came after Nintendo’s American boss Reggie Fils-Aime spoke to Time about the issue.

Specifically on Joy-Con syncing, all I can tell you is that we are aware of and have seen some of the reports,” he added. We’re asking consumers a lot of questions. That’s why we want to get consumers on our help line, so we can get as much information to understand the situation as possible. And so we are in a fact-finding mode, to really understand the situation and the scenarios. And with that information, we’ll look and see what the next steps are.”

Reggie had a similar tone about screen scratching problems.

We have done, as you know, literally hundreds of events, starting with our activity back in January, and most recently the various tours that we continue to take the system out on. As soon as I heard of this report, I asked my teams, "Have we seen this in our own experience?" And the candid answer has been no.

So throughout all of those experiences, throughout all the docking and undocking we’ve done, we haven’t seen it. So this is one where if it is happening, we want to understand more as to what the specific situation is. Which is why we want consumers to let us know through our support site.”