I have the same experience. PS3 controllers work perfectly and heavy use and all 3 of my dualsense controllers have bad stick drift . Going to take them apart and see if I can clean them soon . I've also had to take apart one of my dualsense controllers already because one of the buttons stopped working.

My DualShock 4 lived a very long time.

I think the mini charging connector broke before the stick drifted.

Now I've had 2x refurbished DS5 from GameStop.

One stick tore off from broken down rubber/material. The other stick drifted real bad, after both extended plans ended too.

Current purple DS5 was new from Best Buy last July.

It started drifting three weeks ago.

I bought the extended plan and they said I can exchange it or use as a store credit towards a different controller (I see the edge joystick module is out of stock everywhere lol).

For the PS4 controller I followed this guide to fix the drift I got. Had to take apart joystick and clean the disc looking things.

Can definitely confirm the short lifespan of PS5 sticks.

Mine not only started drifting within a year, it also has "stuttering" inputs where tilting the stick forward sometimes produces short inputs in bursts for a second before it works normally.

You don't have to, if no one did then they would have to manufacture them to a higher standard

I’m guessing it’s because Nintendo has a much broader reach with casuals, so there is a higher likelihood that people with legal know how will end up experiencing it first hand and can react accordingly.

I think people judge it too much. It's a pretty early design, and it layed the ground work for what analog sticks are now.

The PlayStations controller for example didn't even have sticks, even though it's also a console with mainly 3D games. At least Nintendo took the effort to design something that is more usable for 3D games.

And I mean after that, they rarely made bad sticks? The Gamecube controllers sticks have a very unique, very nice feeling to them that's still more or less there with the Wii. The Wii U has more traditional sticks, but they also work completely fine. My gamepad has many hundreds of hours of playtime on it, and the sticks work like on day one.

But yeah, that definitely changed with the Switch. Fuck that thing and its joy cons, already had drift on them multiple times. The thing that annoys me the most is that they just pretend like the problem is not there, they basically tell you to go fuck yourself. Even my Switch pro controller had drift issues, which is just something I never had with Nintendo controllers before.

The plastic itself would wear out before the potentiometers ever got a chance to. I remember countless flaccid N64 controllers. Mario Party was a prime culprit. I never had that game, I kept a dedicated controller I never shared with guests, and I trained myself to be extra delicate with it. It ended up less only slightly flaccid by the time I sold my N64.

Mine was the right trigger from playing The Crew 2. I would subconsciously squeeze the shit out of it thinking that would make my car go a little bit faster. It got so bad that I couldn't even go full throttle.