PlayStation 5 DualSense Controllers Suffering From Stick Drift, Players Say

Some PlayStation 5 owners are now reporting that they are experiencing a problem that once plagued Nintendo’s popular portable handheld console: stick drift.

Sony only released the PS5 in November last year, and along with it came the new DualSense controller. This controller was obviously meant to let players have a fully immersive video game experience. The PS5 will churn out beautiful visuals and audio and pass it on to a connected screen and audio output device, while the DualSense will let players feel the game on their hands.

Sadly, as Kotaku noted, some users said they are already experiencing what Nintendo Switch owners' Joy-Cons suffered from – the dreaded hardware problem called “drift.”

For those who don’t know, this problem affects the controllers’ joysticks in such a way that they are “stuck.” In effect, the player’s in-game character, pointer/cursor, map and so on will keep on moving even without the player touching the joystick.

One Reddit user uploaded a video to the online forum showing their experience with the issue. In the video, the player’s hand is shown holding the DualSense controller, but the player’s thumb and fingers aren’t touching anything, including the joysticks.

The screen behind the player’s hand shows the in-game character’s vision, turning around as if the joysticks were tilted left. The game is in first-person view, so players only see the in-game character’s weapon and the environment – all of it.

The video was uploaded to Reddit about two months ago, indicating that the problem has existed for a while now.

Other PS5 users also shared their complaints and frustrations over on Reddit. One of them noted that the DualSense controller already had the problem out of the box.

One Redditor also uploaded a video, this time showing an in-game character moving around. The game is in third-person view, which means viewers will see the player character moving around. The player will move the stick and stop, but the player character won’t stop moving.

Others talked about the things they did in an attempt to fix the problem but to no avail.

One user shared, “Also this isn't a 'help' post, I already tried everything I can think of. I turned off and on my bluetooth, power cylced my ps5, reset my dualsense controller and even charged it overnight to make sure it wasn't a low battery problem.”