Complaint against Nintendo for premature obsolescence

In January 2021, following nearly 25,000 complaints from European consumers, BEUC and its members submitted a complaint about Nintendo to the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities for systematic problems with the functionality of the Nintendo Switch console.

Consumer complaints were received across Europe, in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia and Greece. Consumers expressed their dissatisfaction with a recurring technical problem with Nintendo Switch controllers, commonly referred to as “Joy-Con Drift”. This causes the games’ characters to move without touching the controller, making the console unusable.

This complaint was officially closed in April 2023, with the news that Nintendo had committed to lifelong free repairs of Nintendo Switch game consoles suffering from ‘Joy Con Drift’.

We asked the European Commission to call on national authorities to investigate Nintendo’s practices in their countries, launch a coordinated enforcement action and issue a joint position, requesting the company to change the design of their product, to effectively prevent its early obsolescence, and until then, to repair this product for free and properly inform consumers about the limited lifespan of the Joy-Con controllers.

Finally, we asked the European Commission to inform us about any relevant procedural steps taken with regards to the potential investigation and co-ordination and to be regularly informed about the process under confidentiality requirements.

This complaint was officially closed in April 2023, with the news that Nintendo had committed to lifelong free repairs of Switch game consoles suffering from ‘Joy Con Drift’.