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.

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

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.

Seriously, learn how to replace the sticks and get TMR sticks. I hate how wasteful people are. That's 10 controllers in the landfill for nothing.

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.

You bought a device dedicated to games when you were poor???

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.

Soldering changed my life. Embedded electrotechnics are the closest thing to magic we have.