Who knows the particulars of the PS5 joysticks better than the company that makes them? Let’s take a look at Alps’ spec sheet for the RKJXV series, a ThumbPointer? (Stick Controller) made for “Game” purposes. Search around eBay and other shopping sites, and you’ll see variants of this model number listed alongside many PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch Pro Controller joystick replacements. Right on page one of the product sheet is the operating life for the RKJXV’s potentiometers: 2,000,000 cycles.
One of our teardown engineers measured their own Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) controller interactions for back-of-the-envelope joystick life math. Averaging ten different 30-second intervals, they made roughly 100 full potentiometer rotations per minute. If you play a less stick-intensive game than a first-person shooter, rotating 80 times per minute, you’ll hit 2,000,000 rotations in 25,000 minutes, or 417 hours?that’s just 209 days, playing 2 hours per day.
At a more kinetic 120 rotations per minute, that’s 139 days at 2 hours per day. So Alps’ own rating for accurate joystick measurements is, in one gamer’s hypothetical experience, 4-7 months? and that’s with a very non-pandemic 2-hour cap on your game time.
That doesn’t necessarily mean your joystick will drift at that point?it could fail earlier, or keep working fine for much longer. But nothing lasts forever, and potentiometers are no exception. Here’s why.