Stick drift isn't when the sticks fail to recenter (which is what this would help with).
Stick drift is when the electrical contacts inside the stick change over time and as a result the electrical signal changes over time. A perfectly centered stick might have the same signal as slightly off to the side. (Which this wouldn't help with)
But the rubber bands might be set up in a way that they sticks are slightly off center, at the exact position needed to cancel out the stick drift
Stick drift never existed before Xbox 360 and ps3, actually the first version of ps3 controller didn't have stick drift, it's made problem
The physical mechanism that causes stick drift exists in all controllers that use resistance of electrical signals instead of something like hall effect sensors. If you have metal sliding over metal, it's going to degrade over time. It's very possible the early controllers had stick drift, it just wasn't noticeable because it was so bad that every early console just had horribly large dead zones. Only the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast used hall effect joysticks back then and that never caught on. So I guarantee that with enough time, a Dual Shock controller would also develop stick drift.
And sometimes things like this are just a thing that happen when you miniaturize electronics. An xbox controller does a LOT more than an atari 2600 controller did, in less space. Cramming more stuff into less space means everything has to be tinier. and when you have abrasive metals rubbing against each other, and the metal is thinner, it's going to wear out faster. They've flown too close to the sun in some cases and they wear out WAY too fast. Which is a widespread problem but not so widespread that there are no working controller. Clearly what they are doing still works.
This isn't nearly as much of planned obsolescence as you would think. They just release a new generation of console and make it not backwards compatible with older controllers for that. This is just that as things get more complex, they become more fragile. I would much rather play Elden Ring on an xbox controller that might get stick drift than an atari 2600 joystick.
If you had a console growing up, you probably weren't that poor.
It can be pretty easy to get up a second-hand console cheap, free, and/or as a gift.
Have you ever seen how much good/working stuff people throw away? If you're a little bright, you can get people to pay you to haul their "junk" away.
definitely more common now at least in my area. When I was a kid goodwill and value village were charging $40 for an old beat up snes or n64 and that was the whole clothes budget for me and my three siblings.
Friend ended up giving me a gamecube in middle school and that was my first console.
This
Stick drift wasn't a huge issue before the latest gen.
The Dreamcast had hall effect joysticks and the controllers cost half what subsequent controllers did
We've been taken for a ride
I could believe that the Switch Joycons and the PS5 DualSense have a reason to cost as much as they do if it weren't for the fact that the Xbox One/Series X controller, which is functionally identical to the 360 controller, which wasn't that different than the Original Xbox controller, costs the same as the DualSense.
Far away from you
The modern controller really does suck, I have had atleast 10 and every one died from drift, I might be particularly sensitive to it and I do play souls games hard core so they get their fair use but still under no circumstance under normal use should 10 separate controllers die from the same issue.
I just buy superior 8bitdo, Guilikit and Gamesir third-party controllers that utilize drift-immune hall sensors and work across all platforms with huge internal batteries for sometimes half the price of the original controllers. Maybe Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony will upgrade their pieces of trash one day.
Ah yes I too like engaging in controller bondage
I grew up poor. What drift? I grew up on mouse and keyboard because a computer was also useful for schoolwork and it's not like it was a gaming PC anyway, it was really crappy but could play GTA San Andreas at 20 fps.
Keyboard and mouse cost like 5 euros a piece to replace, though I don't believe I ever needed to replace a keyboard.
Can't have drift if you don't have analog controls ¯_(ツ)_/¯ The pain I experienced as a kid was finding a PC controller, working a full day to get the thing working, only to realize it is complete ass, man did I respect console controllers after that.
Oh man I remember that controller. There was a little stick you could screw into the d-pad that was a bit of help for some games, but it was all pain after a while
I loved my gravis gamepad.
That's not how stick drift works. If that worked, then recalibrating the controller should work. Secondly, I guess you weren't the kinda kid who loved taking things apart and putting them back together again. Fixed stick drift on a joystick when I was a teenager by taking the joystick apart, cleaning the sensor and putting it back together again. Had no clue what I was doing and this was before youtube, yet I still managed to do it right.
I must say, I must have gotten lucky for years while gaming because I had never experienced stick drift and only heard of it in the last few years.
Broken buttons, that I did experience.
Shibari controller setup.
That’s what I used to spin in circles while playing GTA V online
I used a broken bit of popsicle stick to run in circles on Quest 64. Running is all that was needed to increase your dex. Left it on all day and boom, max dex when I got home.
I learned to solder, and now here we are. 14 years later I still have to solder different potentiometers into my controllers. (Hall)
Soldering is probably one of skill that opens up lot of possibility because most of time when dealing with pcbs (most electronic device overall) you have to desolder, replace the component, and solder new part in.
Next step is ID'ing unmarked component and understand datasheet so you know what you're dealing and how to deal with them.
Soldering changed my life. Embedded electrotechnics are the closest thing to magic we have.
Reminds me of my poor N64 controller after renting Mario Party.
Although it does remind me of grinding to level up familiars in Castlevania SotN on OG PlayStation.
Rubberband-trim team go!
