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Comment by jbm | Hacker News Reader

Strange, my copy of fitbox died after about 2-3 years of occasional use without any abuse.

To be fair, this was the case for my Joycons too (Calling it drift is branding, they are effectively unusable)

I like Nintendo's games but their QC has always been a little off. I got bad joypads even in the 80s when we got a NES. (Not having the internet and being a dumb kid I thought I was only limited to moving up and left on Zelda for whatever reason)

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I have an Xbox 360 wired controller that I purchased circa 2008. I use it at least 1-2 times a week - these days for gaming on PC mostly, although I still pull the 360 out of the closet from time to time. The thumbstick rubber is definitely starting to get a little worse for wear at this point, but the controller still functions perfectly.

I cannot understand how we used to engineer controllers that last, and now we just... don't.

Literally have the same thing; a wired XBOX360 controller that I bought a long time ago. I had to clean up the gunk inside a few years ago, but it still works perfectly fine.

I've seen some videos explaining the cause of the Joycon issue and it feels like it must be cost cutting (on the most important component of the device). People even fix it temporarily with a piece of cardboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StRvTiRagPo

Keep in mind, these are 100$+ in Canada. Per my experience, I think it will be another 40 years until I buy another Nintendo console.

Dead zones. Older controllers had bigger dead zones so the wear didn't matter as much. Switch joycons are physically smaller sticks so this makes the problem worse. There's even less tolerance to wear.

I think it's literally cost-cutting. Parts that used to be built well enough that they last years are now built just well enough to not fail in testing.

Luckily, you can now buy third-party controllers that use hall effect sensors.

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