While we are big fans of the PlayStation 5 DualSense driver, no hardware is completely bug-free. Despite all its fancy features, such as haptic feedback and adaptive activators, it’s a very technical kit, so there will be one or two issues that arise. As far as we know, nothing has been too widespread, but the number of people reporting analog stick drift in the DualSense is growing.
If you have not heard the term “drift” before in relation to drivers, it refers to a problem in which the pad detects an input to the disks when there is none. For example, the camera moves in a first-person shooter without even touching the right stick. Here is a video that summarizes it quite perfectly:
As Kotaku found, users have been drifting DualSense just 10 days after the PS5 release. Apparently, this is a bug that is covered by the driver warranty, which means that Sony will repair or replace the bearing. However, depending on where you live, you may have to pay for shipping your DualSense to the company. It is not ideal.
That said, our experience with PlayStation customer service in the UK has been quite positive. One of this author’s DualSense drivers suffered a different problem in which one of the triggers lost its resistance. After explaining the situation by phone, an email was sent containing a printable postcard, which allowed us to send the blog at no cost. A few weeks later, a new driver arrived at the site. We can only imagine that this rather painless process would be the same for a derivative DualSense or any other hardware problem.
Viouslybviament, the PS5 driver is not the only one dealing with drift. Any driver with analog discs is potentially sensitive to this, the most notorious example being Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons. Still, it’s a frustrating mistake if it happens to you, and not what you expect from your new console. Have you had problems like this with your DualSense? Respond to our survey and discuss in the comments section below.