Experts say PS5 joystick drift is getting bad and will get a lot worse

While it’s still extremely difficult to even buy a PS5 without battling hundreds of thousands of other potential consumers (and scalper bots) online, those who avidly obtained and played with the new DualSense controller may have noticed after just a few months that a The old and common problem has returned.

In some cases, the joysticks on the DualSense controller are starting to shift. For example, when you are not moving them in any direction, they can slowly pull your character or cursor in one direction or another.

This was also a problem on the PS4, and the two PS4 controllers that I still have have directional drift issues, and I switched between them based on the game I was playing when it would be worse if a slight drift to the left or a slight drift upward. . But that was after years of use, and some are already experiencing it on PS5. Previous research has revealed a possible “device life” of just over 400 hours of use before problems begin to appear.

This is of course something that has plagued the Nintendo Switch as well, as left Joy-Con drift is a persistent issue since launch, so much so that Nintendo had to open up a trade-in / fix program for the issue, and They have been the target of multiple default class action lawsuits. Sony has also received at least one lawsuit for the PS5 DualSense drift.

The other bad news is that unless Sony fixes this, it will only be an increasingly visible problem as time goes on. Gamers who released a PS5 are out of luck and will likely have to deal with this at some point, depending on frequency of use, but if Sony didn’t fix this by moving from PS4 to PS5, it’s unclear if they will. to fix it throughout the life of the PS5, even if it starts to attract more potential lawsuits.

A new video from the iFixit channel talks about the causes of this, ie. blemishes created within the controller by overuse, and why the nature of the problem means it’s only going to get worse:

There are not many true solutions for this, at best, there are none that you can prepare yourself without voiding the warranty. Some games have joystick calibration to temporarily adjust for the problem, but not many. All iFixit really suggests is trying to replace it under warranty before it’s too late, or just buying a new controller (which I did many times in the PS4 era for similar reasons).

It is true that this is a problem that can occur with most joysticks these days, as these problems have been prevalent at Nintendo and Sony for years. Microsoft has escaped scrutiny of the issue at the level of its rivals, and yet by looking for Xbox One controller drift, you can see that there are still issues there, and yes, even a class action lawsuit against them as well. But there doesn’t seem to be What Many reports of X / S Series controller drift issues than PS5, although that may change over time.

This seems like an issue that the industry needs to solve as a whole, but for now, it’s something to watch out for, and you may need to go through warranty covered drivers as a way to fix this for now, before it becomes a problem that you have to shell out $ 60 + for a new controller. Sony’s stance at the moment is that they will fix or replace all drivers that have issues under warranty, but we’ll see if they take more important steps in the future to avoid further lawsuits.

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