Were people expecting this?
I'm actually not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely curious if people were expecting the shell to charge, because general controller setups don't work this way on any of the systems.
Both PS4 and Xbox are set up to charge, unplug, play, plug back in. Neither of them come with cables long enough to practically play while still charging, not unless you like to stand two feet away from your system while you play. Wii controllers had zero ability to charge while you play even if you bought a charger, and they ate batteries like a beast. So did 360 controllers unless you, surprise surprise, bought a charging kit.
So lets stop for a second and really think about this. Do you have any reason to leave the Joycons anywhere but docked on the Switch and charging when not in use, and are you really going to use the Switch in docked mode for longer in one sitting then that charge will last? I mean, I know Breath of the Wild looks really good and all, but that good?
And if your play sessions are long enough to put a dent in their charge time, there's a good chance you're the type who'd buy a Pro Controller anyways. Now yes, the Pro Controller is stupidly priced, there isn't really much that'll excuse it. I can almost understand using it as a way to recoup a loss taken on the hardware itself, because manufacturers do that all the time early in a system's life, but considering people already have a problem with the controller pricepoint it probably wasn't worth the PR hit. However, it's also important not to forget that it's still only about half the price of Microsoft's special alternate controller, so this is both not a unique problem unfortunate though it may be, and more importantly not something that people seemed to care about back when Microsoft did it.
There are legitimate concerns to have about the Switch, whether you think it looks promising or not. There's still a lot, a lot a lot, of questions to answer about it's online functionality, and especially it's pricepoint, and what we've heard so far hasn't exactly been thrilling. There are still more than a bit of performance benchmarking that'd be really nice to see, even if the initial reports are encouraging. And there's always the hanging question over any new system of whether or not Nintendo is going to properly support it over it's lifespan even if the hardware itself is perfectly fine.
But let's try not to jump down the throat of every little minor grievance or borderline inconvenience just because they aren't starting us off on the best foot. At the absolute least, Microsoft didn't reverse always-online because everyone was complaining about how they didn't like the color or the asymmetrical sticks.
Which is actually my biggest complaint about the Joycons. I prefer symmetrical sticks.
