But yeah I don’t know how the ps4 sticks hold up since I only had mine for a few hours. I hadn’t noticed any wear on the sticks of my ps3 controller. Maybe I have an older one. My ps2 sticks are a little worn down from hundreds of hours of use but not too bad for how long it lasted (only ever owned one)

Out of interest, does the PS4 controller address (what I’ve always thought, as a design flaw) the wear to both analogue stems?

Always irked me with the DuelShock 3. Those controllers, I think, devolved in quality somewhat with later iterations too – A1 etc. The one which shipped with my PS3 has a ‘heft’ to it, has seen a Battlefield or two, a fair amount of war over the years.

I bought a second controller last year (CECHZC2U A1) and the stems on the analogue sticks are already suffering – hasn’t seen anywhere near as much use.

And I hinted at it in the alt text, but Melee and Smash in general was literally MADE for that controller to the point were if you used something else you’d be at a discernible disadvantage when playing on a high enough skill level. And I don’t know, in my own experience, that any controller is used to such great effect. And that’s kind of representative of Nintendo as a whole, in that they don’t put out the most but they tend to put out the best. And so the GC controller isn’t always the ideal controller, but when it is ideal it REALLY works well.

Aside from that, the controller does suffer from wear n’ tear a lot in the control sticks, however I have to wonder how much of that is due to the brutality of playing Melee for hundreds of hours on it compared to playing mostly (often turn based) RPGs on my PS controllers.

The Dreamcast controller must have been a major contributing factor in the late 90’s JRT bubble.

Yes it is. Nintendo needs to PICK SOMETHING and then work at that, refining it in little ways until they get something optimal, as Sony and Microsoft have done. Those controllers are EXCELLENT for precisely that reason. Meanwhile, Nintendo starts over with every iteration, and the results are usually awful.

If this is the avenue taken, even when a bad decision is made, it is only a single small thing as a rule. Consider Sony’s moronic decision to make the start/share buttons flush with the case. It’s a terrible decision, but ultimately a minor one. We can imagine that in their next controller iteration, they’ll fix that.