The controller conundrum - shockingly poor reliability and pro money makers

[Sane]

Some more impressionson the 8bitdo:

 

I played Espgaluda 2, Cotton Reboot, Streets of Rage 4, Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Spelunky and I can confirm the dpad is excellent. I didn't notice any lag, pulling of special moves in Garou worked flawlessly and I did better in most of these games than usual (which is a pretty low bar to be fair).

 

I played through Magmoor Caverns in Metroid Prime and it felt great. The only thing I didn't like was the feel of the tops of the sticks, a bit more slippery than I'd like but that might be newness.

 

I find the Xbox Series controller to be slightly more comfortable to hold. The 8bitdo is slightly smaller and to my fairly big hands the shape of the Series pad is more suited.

 

The "Ultimate software" app on android works pretty well. It has horrible reviews and people complaining about it crashing all the time but for me it seemed fine. It lets you manage pretty much everything: change any button, calibrate, set up different profiles (switched by a dedicated button) and even adjust deadzones on the sticks and triggers.

[Curtis]

Not sure if this is the right thread but the R2 button on my DualSense has snapped it's spring/resistance. I can hear something rattling when I shake it and the R2 responsiveness has become insanely sensitive, so much so I'm getting accidental button presses at the worst possible times. 

 

Guess I need to splash £60 on a new one? 

[Down by Law]

You should be able to buy a replacement spring for a few quid, easy to take apart and fix yourself - plenty of guides on YouTube 👍

[Curtis]

Oh wow, really? The lack of screw holes made me think it’d be a nightmare to open. I’ll do some research tomorrow.

 

Thanks! 

[df0]

I did that three times, I do not recommend it. The springs are tiny, you need to have to proper tools (set from iFixIt is superb but costly) and you just know it has to be repeated for the others trigger soon enough. If the controller is over a year old just replace it.

[Transient Curse]

On 23/02/2023 at 13:21, Timmo said:

Stick drift is really, really fucking shit and I have absolutely no issue ordering replacement controllers off of Amazon and sending my shitters straight back for a full refund. Probably the most illegal thing I do. See you in court Jeff Bezos

...asking for a friend, do you worry about the serial number of your new controller not matching your old one?  Do you send the old box (which also has a serial number) so it matches the controller that's going back? 

[Timmo]

3 minutes ago, Transient Curse said:

...asking for a friend, do you worry about the serial number of your new controller not matching your old one?  Do you send the old box (which also has a serial number) so it matches the controller that's going back? 

Old controller in new box. I don’t think they check that closely as long as the colours match. Plus if you spend a lot with them I think there’s more trust/grace as well. 

[Sane]

I don't think they look at it at all. I usually get my refund 5 minutes after dropping the item at the DHL service point.

[Darwock]

I got an attack of stick drift from the Duelsense during a game of bloody Tetris, in which I only use the d-pad.

 

I was about three drops away from getting the 15 combo for a trophy when the right stick started ghosting inputs and rotated my field to the extreme limit. I was torn between fixing the screen or not screwing up my combo. Got the combo and the trophy video captured the problem perfectly.

 

 

Fucking ludicrous. Can’t even use my trusted wired Hori controller because I’m playing the PS5 version. Not impressed.

[Reset]

Overheard my son ( 12 ) talking to 4 of his friends online as they were playing FIFA together the other night. Sounds like they ALL had a case of stick drift.

I have 2 controllers with my PS5. One was returned 2 weeks after purchase because the spring? in the trigger snapped and it stopped springing back after being pressed - It was RMA's without issue. One of them has now suddenly developed quite bad stick drift, but they are well over 1 year old now. The cynical side of me wouldn't put it past the manufacturers to purposely add this weak link to the design knowing it'll boost the sales of additional controllers - a big earner for them.

[wretcherd]

I don't doubt they had stick drift (I'm on my 4th dualsense and all 4 joycons have it), but is stick drift the new catch-all excuse to blame for mistakes/losing that lag used to be?

[jonathanhoey]

On 23/02/2023 at 21:54, ScouserInExile said:

Having never gone near a third-party controller since... erm... ever, in fact, I picked up a PowerA pad for my my Xbox One when the kids started wanting to play games with me. My rational was that I didn't want them breaking my expensive official controller and these ones were only £20 (now £30, it seems). I discovered that, baring them being wired, they were difficult to fault and felt as good quality as the official ones. I use one for PC gaming and wouldn't swap it for anything, even the frankly excellent Series S pad. They#re absolutely fantastic pads and quite a long way from the £210* someone mentioned one of the official PlayStation controllers is. Have three of them these days.

 

 

* I didn't know abut this, what are you getting for your £210?

 

I really like my PowerA pad EXCEPT it doesn't work on Mac. I don't play games that often on my Mac but it's annoying that when I do want to, that pad doesn't work. 

[K]

In case anyone is interested, the 8bitdo Utlimate controller has apparently been updated to work with Apple hardware, including Macs. Only the 2.4ghz version is compatible - the (more expensive) Bluetooth version won't work for some reason.

[Uzi]

 

Saw John Lewis had the DS Edge and when I logged into my account I had a £15 off voucher too. I had a quido cashback gift card for John Lewis so this technically didn't take anything out of my account but its the most I've ever spent on a fucking controller. Oof. I'll sell the bunch of dualsenses and xbox/switch pads I have (that function fine) and just use this for everything and go all in on it.

 

I left the idea of another elite xbox controller behind because ive been playing a tonne of warzone 2 and the xbox pad just doesn't feel great in that now. I perform significantly better (10+ kill games) on the dualsense so I've left the xbox pad ecosystem behind now

 

TLDR- buy pads from John Lewis, they come with a 2 yr gurantee!!! 

[mwaawm]

Used to be a first party controller only ganger but this generation my beboncool pads bought for less than £20 have relegateded my official joycons, procontroller and arcade sticks to paperweight status. 

 

Maybe we need to go back to the vcs and its fully sealed joysticks great to prevent dust damage to mechanisms (and painful blisters after extended play)

[Harsin]

I see MS have announced that they’re releasing the Elite controller in new colours while doing fuck all about the appalling QA.

[Darwock]

Just bought my first replacement Dualsense. It’s new obviously, but I fully intend to exchange it before the warranty period is up. I believe that’s 12 months. It was an Amazon purchase so is a pdf copy of the invoice all I need to make that possible?

[Rog]

Out of interest, has anyone got anywhere with threatening companies with the consumer rights act? A few buttons on my dualsense stopped working out of the blue, it's around 20 months old and in otherwise perfect condition. I got in touch with Sony who quoted their year warranty, but I replied saying that I didn't consider the pad to have lasted a reasonable amount of time. They told me to take it up with the retailer - correct, but a pretty pathetic response given the product and size of the company.

 

The retailer has also quoted me their 1 year warranty and I'm waiting on their response to my reply mentioning the act. Studio.co.uk, so Mike Ashley I think.

[T Pot]

5 hours ago, Harsin said:

I see MS have announced that they’re releasing the Elite controller in new colours while doing fuck all about the appalling QA.

 

And there's another thing I won't buy from them. It must be a massive money maker for MS. They have the creator where you can build loads of different pads, but it seems every week they release a new colour of controller. 

 

No improvements or anything. Just different colours. 

[Capwn]

I read some pro tips a few months for the PS5 pads, like dimming the light, reducing haptics to minimal, reducing mic volume etc etc

 

I don’t notice any difference, still get around 3 hours on a full charge.

[CrichStand]

Noticed my Series S controller, out of nowhere, has pretty bad drift the other day. Was pissed off as its only 1 yr old and just out of warranty. Been playing loads of Resi 4 on PS5 since it launched and now, from out of nowhere, my launch day DualSense has bad drift too. Total fucking joke. Will have to spend the best part of £100 for 2 new controllers?!?!? Seriously??? Absolute piss take!!!
 

Means I now have 3 for 3 - Switch, Series S, PS5 all with fucked controllers. Strange how I have original PS, PS2, GC, Xbox, 360 controllers that were all absolutely hammered for years, yet they all still work, not even a hint of drift. Planned obsolescence much? Certainly seems like it.

[Darwock]

Everyone needs to start sending their controllers back just before warranty expires, drifting or not. If the manufacturer’s are trying to profit off failing controllers then if it ends up costing them more in the long run maybe they will actually design something more durable?

 

With the news that Nintendo will repair all joy-cons (warranty or not) I have to wonder why they aren’t looking to replace the potentiometers with Hall effect sensors going forward to avoid that cost. I guess it’s minimal.

[CrichStand]

After another hr or so of play, my DualSense is now pretty much unusable. Left stick is absolutely fucked, like it’s constantly being held to the left, which is great fun when trying to play anything. At least the Switch and Xbox controllers still function fairly normally, with only the occasional bit of drift. Crazy that the DualSense just went tits up in just one session.

 

@Darwock I would say they are all definitely trying it on. For example, with Nintendo, I bet the fix costs peanuts, but they sold a crazy amount of replacement Joycons at full price. So even after fixing stuff for free they’ll have made a big profit. 
 

The DualSense breaking is the one that pisses me off the most as they’re so expensive. Worst possible timing too - Chapter 12 of Resi 4, which is absolutely immense and one of the best games I’ve played since Returnal. Amazon haven’t even got them in stock either, unless you want to shell out extra for Black or purple or whatever.

[tenrou]

I never thought about buying a new one and switching but I should have.  I never had any issues with controllers before the ps4 and xbox one but now there dropping like flies.  I had 2 dual shock 4s and just had my first series controller at a little over a year old have their left stick stop working.  I play mainly on pc with a console on the side and when you plug these in and do joystick calibration you can see how bad it is.  In some it's just a bit off dead centre on rest which although not ideal is usually bearable but the series s in particular you pressed up on the left stick and it started flicking between registering up and centre constantly and the controller just stopped registering any other direction. 

 

All these are so expensive now as well.  Every time a console comes out the controllers go up a tenner.

[Alex W.]

When people say buying a new one and switching, do they mean they swap their faulty pad in there and return it without mentioning it’s faulty? Or do they claim it arrived faulty? ‘Cause you know all the open box pads wind up as Warehouse deals being sold as new but open box to other customers.

[Darwock]

I stupidly threw away my receipt for my first dualsense (not the pack-in one) about a week before it started showing signs of drift, when it was still within warranty.

 

I did consider doing a buy/swap/return for it, but my conscience got the better of me. My new one is definitely getting a warranty return at ~11 months though.

[Strafe]

6 hours ago, Alex W. said:

When people say buying a new one and switching, do they mean they swap their faulty pad in there and return it without mentioning it’s faulty? Or do they claim it arrived faulty? ‘Cause you know all the open box pads wind up as Warehouse deals being sold as new but open box to other customers.

You’d think Amazon would check the

serial number on these things.

[CrichStand]

Bit the bullet and ordered a Midnight Black DualSense direct from Sony. £65 including delivery. 🤨 Will soldier on with the Switch and Xbox controllers for now. 

[Keyboard Koala]

All this talk about PS5 controllers breaking after less than 2 years of use, is really putting me off buying a PS5 tbh. 

I've been on the same DualShock 4 for the last 7 years, so I'm not really keen on having to spend £70 every two years for a new controller

[Down by Law]

As a counterpoint I still have my launch white dual sense which has had 100s of hours of use with zero problems.

 

They are really easy to take apart, I've bought some faulty ones on the cheap off eBay and put in new thumbsticks and shoulder button springs and sold them on. Much easier to take apart than the DS4 was.