The Nintendo Switch Joy-Con is one of gaming's more interesting controllers. It can split into a pair to act as separate motion controllers, or come together to feel like a normal game pad. It allows for multiplayer right of of the box, or can be the sides of a handheld device. The Joy-Con is also full of problems, prompting a class-action lawsuit over a product that just hit store shelves. For all the wonder of the Joy-Con, however, it appears that we've only scratched the surface. Enter a series of alternate Joy-Con designs that could answer Switch owners' biggest requests.
This news comes to TheGamer via Let'sGoDigital, a Dutch tech site. Their team received a tip from the Bonami Games & Computers Museum. The museum came across a series of patents filed by Nintendo back in 2016, a year before the Nintendo Switch's launch. Three of these patents were for different Joy-Con designs. They include a wide version and two with D-pads.
The first design has the same button layout as the current Joy-Cons, just on a lot wider of a surface. Perhaps the Nintendo R&D team encountered the first common complaint of Joy-Cons during testing – that they're too small. While it would be nice to have Joy-Cons that better fill one's hands, this design seems too chunky. It needs more/bigger buttons, because it just looks silly as-is.
The other two designs, meanwhile, retain the same size as today's Joy-Cons but play with the idea of a D-pad. The plus-shaped input is a staple of gaming controller's, and a tradition of Nintendo in particular. Many are still asking for a D-pad on Joy-Cons. Maybe these designs would spark their interest.
These patents tell an interesting and somewhat confusing story. It seems that Nintendo thinks adding a D-pad to the Joy-Con means taking something else away. The first one has D-Pads replacing the joysticks, which would have pre-empted the drift problem but wouldn't have facilitated games like Splatoon 2. The other one takes away most buttons for the sake of D-pads. That one just makes us wonder how we would have been able to pause or go to the home menu.
The simplest answer, the one that many fans have suggested, is taking away the arrow buttons on the left Joy-Con and replacing that with a D-pad. That would give it a very similar layout to the Wii U gamepad.
So what does this all mean in the end? It's hard to tell. The fact that these patents were filed in 2016 could just mean that they were alternate ideas. Nintendo could have filed patents just in case, with no immediate plans to sell these designs in stores. Their existence does mean that there's potential for the future, however. Maybe all of the drift issues will inspire Nintendo to take the Joy-Con back to the drawing board, and these designs would make for a starting point. Just not that weird wide one, please.
Sources: LetsGoDigital, Bonami Museum