After recently admitting that it had a “spectacularly terrible response” to Joy-Con grip detachment complaints with its Killswitch Nintendo Switch 2 case, Dbrand has some good news: it says its redesigned Joy-Con grips fix the issue and the company will be able to mass produce them.
Dbrand had already promised it would be replacing the grips for everyone, and now we know that the replacement will be the redesign instead of a refined version of what’s already available. Here’s a video from Dbrand showing the Joy-Con not detaching while being held from the Joy-Con with the updated grips.
In addition to the modification to the Joy-Con grips — which Dbrand is calling Joy-Lock — the company says it will be sending out silicone friction pads to place on the Killswitch adapter for Nintendo’s dock to address “the issue of one-handed undocking on our Dock Adapter” and keep the adapter “snugly seated” on the dock.
By “early next week,” Dbrand says it will “share a production schedule that outlines when you’ll be able to claim your free Joy-Lock replacements, and when you can expect them to ship.” New production and any unshipped orders will include the Joy-Lock Grips and have the silicone friction pads preinstalled on the Dock Adapter.
In June, some users of the original Killswitch Switch 2 case found that if they held the console primarily by a Joy-Con while the case and grips were on, the controller would pop off and the console would drop down. Probably not what you want to have happen to your brand-new Nintendo console.
Dbrand published a lengthy post about the issue where it argued that “nobody routinely holds their Switch 2 like this” and that Joy-Con detachment only happens if you hold the console in a very specific way. But many users compared that response to when Steve Jobs told people running into iPhone 4 reception issues to “just avoid holding it that way.”
The company soon after published a mea culpa post where it said that “you should be allowed to hold it however the fuck you want, without detachment occurring” and outlined how it was working on two potential fixes: a slightly tweaked version of the original grip and the one with a bigger redesign.
