Quantum mechanics might have the solution to joystick drift
The Nintendo Switch may be remembered as much for repopularizing portable gaming as it will for a hardware issue that affected millions of gamers: joystick drift.
Drifting is the most common term for an issue where joysticks detect false inputs — even when no one is touching a controller — causing unwanted movements to happen in a game. The issue also affects controllers from Sony, Microsoft, and third-party accessory makers.
Hall effect sensors emerged a few years ago as a potential solution to the problem, but there’s an even better option out there that’s easier to retrofit into existing controller designs. That solution is tunneling magnetoresistance, or TMR, a technology that revolutionized hard drives two decades ago using quantum mechanics and magnets.
Like Hall effect sensors, TMR sensors avoid the fundamental problem with more traditional joysticks: their sensors wear down as a matter of their design. The controllers that ship with the last few Xbox consoles, the PS4 and PS5, and the Switch are all built around sensors like this — potentiometers, a component that can be used to change or measure electrical resistance.
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