Valve obviously wants to avoid the infamous joystick drift of the Nintendo Switch on the Steam platform.
One of the bigger problems that followed Steam deck The hardware reveals the durability of the handheld analog joystick.
There are two Steam Deck, and many players’ experience with Nintendo Switch makes them question whether Valve’s equipment will also encounter similar problems. Namely: joystick drift refers to the tendency of the accuracy of the analog joystick to decrease and to move slightly by itself. These problems occur in almost all analog joysticks in modern controllers, but they are so common in Nintendo Switch consoles that Nintendo has been sued many times, forcing the company’s president to apologize later.
Valve seems to be aware of all this because the company has always emphasized that the Steam Deck analog joystick was manufactured with reliability in mind.
Hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat told IGN: “We have done a lot of reliability testing in all aspects-as well as all inputs and different environmental fac tors and all similar things.”
“I think we think this will perform very well. And I think people will be very happy with it. I think it will be a good purchase. I mean, obviously every part will fail at some point, but We think people will be very satisfied and happy about this.”
In addition to rigorous testing, Valve also chose more durable components when designing the Steam Deck, especially to avoid such problems.
“We deliberately picked something that we know about performance, right? We don’t want to take risks, right? Because I’m sure our customers don’t want us to take risks in this area,” added designer John Ikeda.
This obviously does not guarantee that Steam Decks will not be affected by joystick drift, but at least you can see Valve explaining any potential problems with analog joysticks. This is in stark contrast to Nintendo, which has not changed the design or manufacturing quality of Switch analog joysticks. This is true even in the more expensive OLED models.
Steam Deck will start shipping in December this year.
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