The REAL Science Behind Controller Drift 

Having an astrophysicist explain stick drift is like using a morphine for a paper cut

actually, i think I'd be ok with the "modular, or easily replaceable thumbsticks" idea.

My solution is one of two options. Either pay a little more for higher quality parts, or slice that $70 price tag down considerably.

This was never an issue on older controllers. Never heard of anyone having drift on PS1-3 and none of mine ever had (some are over 20 years old). Just down to cheaper poor quality components these days, unacceptable as they are so expensive.

Manufacturers dont want you to open their electronics because they’d rather you buy a new one than being able to repair it yourself. Its not about potentially breaking it when its already broken...

“Just buy a new remote, it’s not rocket science.” You’re right, it’s astrophysics.

Controller drift problem needs to be solved as soon as possible.

“You get what you pay for” is something that applies to almost everything except for the gaming industry as worth a buy said.

FFS.... for $70 I’d expect a great controller, no exceptions

Dont you dare diss the PSP man! That shit was amazing for its time

They should make controllers where you can swap out that exact module there’s no reason that we have to purchase a whole new controller for such a small module

The real reason they don't want you opening the controllers is that they want you to encounter resistance when trying to repair them, or extend their use, so that you go and buy a new one.

Controller drift needs to freakin go. This is 2021.

Man the PS2 controllers were built like tanks. All of my controllers still work, some even after 10 years of having layers of dust

The asking price of the controllers is outrageously high for the quality. the issue is as usual, poor business ethic rooted by greed. Every controller could be designed to be easily taken apart, cleaned or fixed. instead you need special tools, and knowledge not given by the manufacturer, and if you open them you just void the warranty and the company washes their hands of it anyway. It's poor business ethic 100%. There is no need to sacrifice any element of the product, we use to get product that was good, cheap and reliable, now everything is overpriced garbage. We aren't getting any of those elements listed. They sacrificed everything for a sale. Since when did controllers ever have such a ridiculously low life span? I know people with working NES controllers from the 80's. And who of us would actually buy the controller knowing it will not last them? If they told people how long the controller lasted, they would have to make them last longer because no one would be paying 80 bucks or more a pop if they knew. This is why they are all facing lawsuits, because they deserve it. It's a scam to sell as many units as possible, when change in design would largely alleviate this issue and every developer making this trash knows it. They just wouldn't get as much money. That is literally in a nutshell why we can't have nice controllers. companies are greedy fucking assholes.

What I find shameful is that they keep increasing the prices of the controlers for features (or at least that's the reason given) but they will most likely die out or be useless anyway, e.g. trackpad.

Lets be honest here. The big 3 gaming companies would rather go through the lawsuit than try to change their fabrication process. Paying for the lawsuit is much cheaper and they can recuperate the money lost by dragging out the lawsuit by years. Changing their production lines though on the other hand would be so much more expensive to do. I really hope we can come to a middle ground with this though so we can all have a better lifespan for our controllers.

When you need a scientist to combat controller drift.

"Drift never used to be a thing." Yeah, I sure am watching an IGN video.

telling me the shit will go bad in 200hours doesnt excuse the fact that it goes bad in 200 hours. but hey, good thing we have touchpads literally no one asked for

This is the intellectual equivalent of Steven hawking telling you how to restart your router

Ive gone through 4 DS4 controllers already... And my Game Cube controller that came with the console on 2005 still works fine and doesnt drift at all.

Video : Controllers last 2 Million Cycles Me: So... 2 smash rounds ???

So frustrating especially when none of my controllers have taken physical damage

Dude they got a whole ass astrophysicist for controller drift💀

He forgot to mention shooting games are even worse.

A few hundred hours isn’t enough for a controller that you pay almost 100 dollars on (more than that in different countries). They should bump it up to a few thousand hours and people won’t mind the initial price bump if the controller will last the lifespan of atleast 3 few hundred hour Controllers.

I like the modular idea of being able to swap the joystick. That just makes sense. They should seriously consider this an option.

I’ve had a controller with a drift and held off on getting a new controller because they were 60$ ‘s. I finally bought a new one and it immediately had the same problem. This was on the ps4.

Now this is rare from IGN. A genuinely great ideia for a video, and well executed as well. Give this guy a raise and more screentime on the channel

Hey! That was my Astronomy Lab Instructor for college!! He was one of the best teachers ever. Took us to the planetarium to relax and have class in.

The controller that came out with My ps4 ( that I bought in 2015 ) has been going strong no problem. But these new controllers last almost a 10months - a year before there's issues

If only these companies actually cared about their consumers.

These controllers are NOT cheap costing $70-80! So they better be good AND reliable!

I've found that slightly separating that green square from the joy stick mechanism fixes the drift. Though if you don't wanna void your warranty i would just leave it and deal with it until you get a new controller.

those days when u could open your controller and clean the muck out of it where the good days

That didn't really explain why my PS2 analog sticks are still in good working order after having played dozens of games over many years while my Joy Cons and Dualshock 4 started drifting within a year after a small handful of games.

The fact that Aaron White can explain controller drift to the world but can’t fix his crooked glasses shows you no one can have everything.

We need them to be modular with easily replaceable parts, that's my favorite option.

My xbox one controller has worked perfectly for five years, got the series x for Christmas and i already got drift, personally id be willing to fork up a little more cash for a controller that actually lasts

IGN:"We went to the university of San Francisco to talk to Aaron White" Cuts to video call.🙃

I love how everyone says dust first but never cheap materials FIRST

Every now and again IGN impresses me by posting something resembling newsworthy

I have a controller where the left analog stick drifts to the left, but only when I press the left trigger. Something about pressing the left trigger causes the potentiometer to be read incorrectly.

Every PlayStation 4 controller I've had. Has had controller drift at one point.

I like the subject and style IGN. Nice job.

I want to share a fix I came up with, about the analog sticks. If cleaning doesn't work and you see the missing traces in the potentiometer, you can pick the wiper inside it and bend the little metal flaps in the opposite direction of the missing traces and also up, to make good contact. Doing so the wiper will make contact with new good traces and I think this is a very durable fix, because the traces will have to worn out again before going bad. I fixed my controller with this method that had traces completely missing and this was messing up also L2 R2, it fixed them all. Otherwise you can buy new potentiometers but that requires soldering.

Another solution that wasn't discussed is a software fix. If it drifts by a predictable amount, that amount could be ignored by the software. Assuming the controllers have some kind of unique id, this drift value could be tied to that specific controller. Of course, this would necessitate some sort of "fix drift" screen in the config.

Now I kinda feel bad for spinning my analog stick when the game is loading out of habit.

Only thing I can say is, imagine playing apex on switch lmao

I am experiencing a weird issue with my playstation 5 dualsense controller. I am not sure if its stick drift but every few seconds when I move my left joystick to the right the response in game is either a jagged movement to the right, no movement at all or movement in the complete opposite direction which would be left. Is anyone else experiencing this issue. If so have you found a fix.

3:59 ik that, 2 new gens and one old gen ps4 controllers opened, i called the potentiometer a rotator cuff tho

Sega Dreamcast used hall effect sensors for joysticks and triggers that don't wear out like this, and maintain highly consistent and accurate sensing. Maybe it's time for that to make a comeback.

Wow IGN finally a great video. BRAVO!

The D-pad on my my PS4 controller is reading down inputs at down right now on occasion. Is that still controller drift and how do I fix that?

Need some help. My analog stick seems to not register inputs for one direction, a 100%. For example, if you were in a car game, and turned the analog stick right, the steering would go all the way right but if I did that for the other side it would only for around 75% left. Is this also what’s called stick drift? Or is this something else?

They got a physicist in to explain planned obsolescence lmao

The PSP disrespect in the beginning was uncalled for. Best handheld ever!!!

Can someone explain why my joy cons have no drift when I leave them untouched for a long time (like a month or so) but the more I USE THEM THE MORE DRIFT THEY HAVE, THEN WHEN I LET THEM REST IT DISAPPEARS WHY

So if you buy potentiometers for ps4 controller and replace them will there be no more stick drift

rather than adding the useless features like track pads, blowers, haptic feedbacka and a speaker they should give quality analogue sticks.

So basically we the consumers have to deal with defective controllers that the company knows aren't going to work as intended after about 100 hours of play time and we have to give them more money for controllers that are inevitably going to stop working again after a few hundred more hours. I'd rather pay extra for a reliable higher quality controller than constantly having to go buy new controllers for my games to work as intended.

what about adding a capacitive sensor on the stick so it adds deadzone when you are not touching the analogs.

I've never had controller drift on any gaming controller I've ever had. However I do have a problem that nobody else seems to have on the switch where my left controller won't connect to the switch when it's slotted onto the main device. It worked wirelessly but the second I put it all in handheld mode the left controller constantly connects and disconnects

Man every hardcore gamer needs to watch this video. This definitely cleared some things up for me and made me sad as a rocket league player. Makes sense of why I go through 3-4 controllers a year now.

And guess what: the engineers know which components they're putting into controllers and how long it takes to beat them. Take that as a friendly reminder, that it's unwise to blindly trust companies. They generally try to generate the most success with the least amount of effort. 💰💰💰

Hall effect sensors would fix this problem. Sega used them in the triggers of the dreamcast and I have upgraded rc transmitters with them. They use the hall effect rather than a physical potentiometer that wears down and eventually breaks. Only option now is to keep swapping them with new ones and get high quality ones.

I would have expected high end controllers like the Xbox elite series to use hall sensors. Its ridiculous that hall sensors are not being used, when joysticks have long taken advantage of them in high precision/high reliability applications

i think its a mix of making a product as cheap as possible and planned obsolescence

Fun fact: nintendo's joycons also have some system software issues. When my brother and I got a new pair of joycons because our old pair was drifting terribly, we connected the new ones and they started drifting straight out of the box. We had to manually get rid of the controller on our system for the system to recognize the new one and stop the drift, proving that it's not only a controller problem , but a system error too

my PS4 dualshock controller, the newest one I got less than 2 years ago and played the least time has controller drift and the bumper button doesn't react. It happens on all controllers

I love how he said we never had this problem in the past. Yes we did 😂 it’s been years of sad drift

I never knew what people meant by drifting until this year when my dualshock 3 started doing it. I always just thought people were pushing too hard on the sticks, wearing out the spring tension until the stick rests outside of the deadzone. Crazy seeing the difference between the two in person. Really depressing because the DS3 is hard to find new these days.

had my switch controller start drifting a couple years back, havent touched the thing in years now.

Whenever you ever press a button its always uncertain for the user if you really made a circuit. There are a lot of buttons who disconnects a circuit. Without you knowing it.. Its called “active low“ to activate a function while breaking a cirtcuit.

Wait are they doing the daily fix again? Or was that from the reunion thing they did a lot little while back?

Me gets Controler Drift Me: I guess I have to put the joystick in my mouth and blow air into it

This is the first ign video i watched in probably a year

Things just aren't made like they used to be either. I've been using the same xbox 360 wired white controller that came with the first edition xbox 360 and between Halo, Oblivion, Skyrim, KOA Reckoning, AC and Destiny I've e a s i l y put 10,000hrs over the course of 10ish years into it and those are just my most played games, yet I'm still not experiencing controller drift to this day. Now if I plug it into my laptop I get ever so slight drift, but it's so insubstantial setting a tiny tiny deadzone is enought to mitigate it. Nothing is built to last anymore.

On my PS5 when I move my left analogue stick my camera in games moves up does anyone have any tips?

Just a regular advice. I had two dualsense and both of them I still put them on the plastic bag that they came. Those copper wires inside the controllers are very sensitive to dust. So avoid that and you will increase life span to your controllers

8:01 exept when an elite controller starts drifting 4 months into a 3 year warranty.

It was directly addressed, but I assume the reason PAST controller analog sticks didn't fail as often was because they weren't as sensitive? (aka the good in cheap/good/reliable, so they could be more reliable). And, the answer to drift exists - Hall sensor, magnetic sticks. The Dreamcast used them and now the 3rd party KingKong 2 does. (Unfortunately I heard too bad things about the rest of that controller to make it worth it just for the sticks, but it's a positive outlook for the future).

The Ds3 was so reliable it still works for me 11 yrs later.

I thought it was more common on switch because the joy-con shell opening for the stick, is too small and doesn’t stop the mechanism being over pressed past it’s maximum position.

I think those cycles translate into 5 hours of game play on Mario Party 64

I put a new headphone jack in the ps4 controller and it started strick drifting since then. anyone have any solutions pls

I had terrible stick drift in both my sticks and this totally helped would recommend but when you do take it apart make sure to put it back exactly because I messed up the first time and had to retake the controller apart

Having gone through 2 Xbox elite series 2 controllers that both began drifting within a couple of months it is clear they used the cheapest parts they could. Having paid as much as I did for the controller they should have lasted considerably longer than they did.

"You don't want the very best. You want cheap. And I got cheap."

Some industrial machinery such as Mori-Seiki have analog thumbsticks which are mechanically different, rather than a variable resistor moving around the track it is a metallic stick going near four inductive sensor, maybe gamepads could evolve to that.

He said that no resistance generates a lot of heat but it’s exactly the opposite and low resistance wires are ideal, the problem is that we can’t afford to make electronics with no resistance wires yet because the wires and junctions would need to be made of molecularly perfect carbon matrices. The reason you want to use resistors is to control the voltage in your wires because the components they supply can only work in a voltage window e.g. (1-3v dc). The whole circuit is designed to regulate the current and dissipate heat evenly across the board to stop the creation of hot spots which is always caused by electricity being lost in the form of heat which happens as it travels through any object that resists current. Another benefit of resistors is that they work like a fuse where in the event they are over supplied they blow up meaning that you can often replace them instead of burning out wires, circuits and key components.

Its like lightbulbs: the only reason they dont last forever is so you buy more. Be mad, but that's literally it.

IGN's "The SCIENCE behind -..." should be a recurring segment on the channel, no doubt.

It happens when you click in the sticks to run or melee for example. After purchasing controllers that have extra buttons or tabs on the bottom to use as run or melee actions. I dont click the sticks and dont have drift problems. Making sticks that don't click may solve this issue.

I was here trying to find out what was causing my stick to “drift”. Turns out my right shoulder button was stuck down.

I used to be an electrical engineer, and I just want to say this instructor is MAGNITUDES better at explaining things than most of my profs. This was really fascinating and well done, thanks for the excellent vid 👍🏼

His hat creeps farther and farther back on his head as the video goes on.

My 14 year old PS2 controller still works. Also, my 3 year old Logitech F310 controller also still works. Seems, the older controllers have better sticks than the latest versions of Sony,Xbox and Nintendo.

All consoles need a recalibration test bed on the X media bar at minimum, or in the button re asignment page or at the blue tooth connected object page to reset your deadspot position & size per pad its not that hard! (with cut & paste option to all pads for deadspot size) While there at it they can add the touch pad L & R zone share button & options button to remap. Stick axis flipping, Stick switching. Response curve adjustment on both axis independently (attached to the edge of your digital dead spot as zero position not under it!) And sensitivity max turn rate at outer stick bound % so we can really taylor & save setups per pad with sliders over 100% ranges in 1% increments factory reset for each setting if you mess it up. Then provide a per game save profile to really get over short sighted launches & control calibration options. Just think how many games where sunk by poor control scheme options or clunky calibration? Its infuriatingly bad & should have been fully implemented from PS3 era? Onwards. But no 3rd party endorsement & greed was just to juicy to suckle at filling the world with lanfill products chasing minimum viable product mandates not fit for intended purpose. And thats just the Digital side forgetting quality & longevity of contacts & wipers lol.