The PlayStation 5 has been out for a few months now, and it’s still near impossible to buy.
But there are some lucky people who actually got one whose luck is now … drifting. That’s right,
Nintendo isn’t the only company facing lawsuits over joystick drift anymore.
Who could have seen this coming? Well… Everyone. Anyone could have seen this
coming. Because for all its exciting new tech the DualSense uses off-the-shelf joystick
hardware with a long history of predictable, preventable issues. We’ve investigated
those issues in excruciating detail, and we’re ready to share what we’ve learned.
To get started, let’s head back into a DualSense controller to see just what is failing, and how.
The joystick modules themselves are manufactured by Alps.
Tempting as it may be to blame Alps for the PS5’s drifting issues,
they probably aren’t the villain of this story. As many of you noticed in our teardown video,
these joystick modules looks extremely familiar. You may already recognize it
from the PS4 controller, the DualShock 4, Or from the Xbox One controllers,
Maybe the Nintendo Switch Pro controller, Or the $180 Xbox One Elite controller. Underneath
these plastic caps, the dirty secret is they all use the same joystick hardware.
Getting a closer look at the DualSense joysticks requires some serious effort.
Both modules are soldered to the controller’s circuit board,
but before you remove them you’ll probably want to get the haptic motor wires out of the way.
Since each joystick has 14 solder joints, rather than de-solder them one at a time we
went a more traditional route, blasting them with hot air until the solder gave
way. Basically you’re not getting these joysticks out without soldering gear.
Each of these seafoam covers houses a potentiometer—that’s two per joystick,
set perpendicular to each other. One potentiometer senses up/down movement, and the other left/right.
To understand the part they play,
it’s helpful to know how a potentiometer measures position in a device like this.
It starts with a strip of material with a known, uniform resistance value—that
is, how hard it tries to stop an electric current running through it.
Put one terminal at each end of the strip so you can apply a known voltage across the strip. Now
add a third terminal, called a wiper, that slides back and forth along the strip. Now the controller
can read the voltage at the wiper, which will change predictably based on its location.
The potentiometers in the DualSense joysticks work like that, except instead of moving back and
forth in a straight line, the wiper moves around a semicircular track made of printed carbon film.
When you move the joystick with your thumb, it rotates two little shafts,
which twist the wipers back and forth.
There are two other noteworthy components in the modern joystick. One is a spring that returns your
joystick to a centered, neutral position when you let go. The other is the push-in
button action that many controllers offer on their thumbsticks. More on these in a minute.
First Let’s take a look at Alps’ information sheet for the RKJXV, a familiar-looking joystick.
Right on page one of the product sheet is the operating life for the RKJXV’s potentiometers:
2,000,000 cycles. Just below that, the lifespan for the center-push function: 500,000 cycles.
Translating those numbers to just how long your joystick lasts depends greatly on the
type and intensity of the games you play, but some back-of-the-napkin math based on some of
our coworkers’ Call of Duty gameplay gave us a shockingly-low number: the components in these
sticks could easily exceed their operating life in just over 400 hours of game time.
So, all this finally brings us to our first cause of drift:
wear to the potentiometers. Over time, the wiper scrubbing back and forth against the
resistive pad creates imperfections, altering the voltage readings across the terminals
But it’s not all the potentiometer’s fault. In order to work, they have to measure joystick
movements from a consistent starting point. As you move your joystick around,
the spring-loaded self-centering mechanism can stretch slightly,
creating a new “neutral” point. In this scenario, the potentiometers can still read
the position of the joystick, the reading just isn’t correct anymore.
Finally, contaminants can cause drift. Over time plastic dust can accumulate in the mechanism from
the components grinding together. Even if your plastic remains in great shape though,
outside elements can make their way in and gum things up, causing the stick to get stuck slightly
off-center, or collect in the potentiometer and cause erroneous voltage readings.
So, let’s talk fixing. If you don’t want to solder, there are plenty of YouTube videos
demonstrating fixes that don’t require heat—just a lot of patience, and maybe some fine motor skills.
You could, for example, pry off the potentiometer housings and either clean or replace the rotating
wiper. Or you might try carefully cleaning both the wiper and its graphite track.
Some consoles and games offer joystick calibration, which can help put a band-aid
on some drift issues. It’s not a permanent fix —you’re basically just using software to give the
joystick a new center point, or telling a game to ignore stick inputs within a small radius.
Then there’s the class of fixes that do require soldering, but
even that doesn’t always guarantee a fix.
There are several videos on youtube walking you through these more advanced fixes including
a really cool way to attempt a whole joystick swap, with a soldering pot.
we’ll leave links for a bunch of these videos in the description.
So, you can probably find the part, and maybe even do the soldering,
but the potentiometers in brand-new joysticks from the factory often require
advanced calibration, and, believe it or not, the calibration tools are hard to find. So even
new joysticks can drift. Suffice to say, these things could be a lot easier to fix.
If you’re experiencing drift on any controller, you have three real options: Fix it (either
yourself or through an experienced tech), if it’s still under warranty, you can send the controller
to the manufacturer for a fix, or if neither of those are possible, you’re stuck buying a new one.
After this research, It’s bizarre to us that the console makers don’t consider
joysticks to be consumable parts, and design them to be easily replaced.
No device rated for a finite number of actions, especially one that lives near so
much contamination and takes so much abuse, can maintain perfect performance forever.