New Nintendo Switch Controller Appears To Be On the Way [UPDATED]

Update (9/22/2021 10:55 PM EDT): The confidentiality agreement between the FCC and Nintendo for the new controller patent has been shortened to end on September 24 after being originally listed as March 16, 2022. This has caused rising speculation that the new controller (and potentially Nintendo 64 games on Nintendo Switch Online) will be revealed at the newly announced Nintendo Direct on September 23, as it will air one day prior to the confidentiality agreement’s end date. The original story continues below.

It seems plans are underway for a new Nintendo Switch controller according to a new FCC filing, but specific details can’t yet be released. Information about upcoming Nintendo hardware has been revealed in patent filings in the past, as this was how it was first discovered an SNES controller for the Switch was in development in 2019 – which in turn uncovered that SNES games would be brought to Nintendo Switch Online later the same year.

For the first time since the Nintendo 64 era, Nintendo Switch controllers have been a source of controversy for the company since the console’s launch. The Joy-Con drift issue has been widely publicized and even resulted in lawsuits being filed against Nintendo. Frustration has grown over Nintendo’s sustained lack of a solution for stick drift, especially as the upcoming OLED Switch uses the same Joy-Cons as the base model, suggesting they too can drift after purchase. The Switch Pro Controller and the Switch Lite’s analog joysticks can reportedly drift, too, potentially giving affected customers no respite from the defect.

Nintendo has registered an FCC patent for a new Switch controller, as spotted by Samus Hunter on Twitter. However, the listing provides little information beyond than the fact that it’s for a video game controller. This is because there is a confidentiality agreement in place that’s due to last for six months and will conclude on March 16, 2022.

It’s possible the patented controller design could be significantly different from the Nintendo Switch’s currently available accessories. If it were a minor upgrade to the Joy-Cons or Pro Controller, then there would likely be little need to make the documents confidential. After all, there are already patents for alternate Switch Joy-Cons out in the wild. The controller could be connected to a future hardware revision for the Switch, but the close proximity of the filing to the release of the Switch OLED suggests this may not be the case. Another plausible theory is that the controller is another wireless version of a Nintendo throwback, such as the iconic N664 or GameCube gamepads. If so, the new controller patent could have been filed be in preparation for those consoles’ games to arrive Nintendo Switch Online sometime in the future.

It also bears mentioning the actual Nintendo Switch console isn’t named anywhere in the filing. Nintendo is definitely the filing company, though, so it seems a foregone conclusion that it involves a Switch controller. One other possibility is that Nintendo could be reviving its line of miniaturized retro systems, as the Nintendo 64 Classic Edition was expected to follow the NES and SNES Classic consoles but never materialized. It’s all up in the air at the moment, but the wait to find out the real reason for the filing won’t be a long one, as Nintendo‘s new controller will only remain secret until Spring 2022.

Sources: Samus Hunter/Twitter, FCC

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Scott Baird
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Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz.
A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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