Microsoft has been hit with a class-action lawsuit that claims it’s Xbox One controllers – like Nintendo’s Joy-Cons – suffer from “stick drift”.
As reported by VGC, the class-action complaint – which was filed on 28th April in Washington by Donald McFadden – maintains that customers paying to repair their controllers after the 90-day warranty expires are allegedly paying to repair a known fault.
McFadden alleges that his Xbox Elite controller – which retails for $180/£160 – demonstrated “drift” within a “short time”, as did his replacement controller “three or four months later”. In some cases, it’s alleged controller movements are even registered when the sticks are stationary and no-one is touching them.
Faulty potentiometers – “the mechanism that translates the physical movement of the thumbstick into movement within a game” – are reported to have a “design flaw” as VGC reports “the wiper component of the potentiometer scrapes resistive material off a curved track, resulting in unwanted electrical contact without input from the user”.