PS4 controller in PS3, stick drift issue. Need a definite answer.

Meiyer · April 5, 2020

*** Please only comment if you're good at electro-tech stuff and you know the answer for sure. ***

Hello.

I've got a PS3. The original controller it was shipped with passed away quite some time ago. I bought a new one, which turned out to be a fake junk. It's awful. After some time I figured the PS4 controller would also work with the PS3 system, therefore I bought one. It's a legit Sony DS4 controller. I plugged it in, using a simple micro USB cable and then I paired it up with my PS3. It worked. I started playing GTA and I was very happy, ...until it started having a strong drift on both analog sticks. I had only used the controller like 4-5 times in total, about 10 hours max. A few months later I bought a PS4 Slim. The controller it came with worked just fine but then I wanted to play PS3 again so I plugged the new DS4 controller in the PS3 again. After a few days of use (prob 10 hours in total) it developed a stick drift. So...now you probably know where I'm getting at: both controllers were connected to my PS3 at one point and both controllers developed a stick drift. Is there a correlation here or is it just sheer coincidence? Is it possible that the USB on the PS3 has a different voltage compared to the PS4 and that killed my PS4 controller?

Thanks you very much for reading!

Daniel Z. · April 5, 2020

A USB port can't break something plugged into it AFAIK, the plugged in device controls the power it's being given. It's definately not the PS3, probably just a bad controller

Meiyer · April 5, 2020

1 minute ago, Daniel Z. said:

A USB port can't break something plugged into it AFAIK, the plugged in device controls the power it's being given. It's definately not the PS3, probably just a bad controller

So the fact that both controllers developed an analog stick drift in less than ~10 hours is simply coincidence? Damn. I had both of these controllers fixed at an official Sony repair shop so they work just fine. Should I attempt to use one of the PS4 controllers with my PS3 again?

PolkadotCadaver · February 17, 2021

On 4/5/2020 at 5:16 PM, Meiyer said:

So the fact that both controllers developed an analog stick drift in less than ~10 hours is simply coincidence? Damn. I had both of these controllers fixed at an official Sony repair shop so they work just fine. Should I attempt to use one of the PS4 controllers with my PS3 again?

I know this is almost a year old but I was searching for exactly this topic because I have the same issue.

I had a brand new dualshock 4 and no dualshock 3, wanted to play some Skate 3 on PS3 so I used the dualshock 4. I noticed that the skater started randomly crouching to ollie, which is controlled by the right stick. On the on PS4 it was happening too, in RDR2 I the camera would jump in random directions. When I plugged it into the PC I could see that the stick was registering as randomly jumping around, tried to clean the sensor but nothing worked.

Bought another brand new controller, checked it on Cyberpunk and GTAV and RDR2, worked fine. Played some more Skate 3 and it's happening all over again. That's just an insane coincidence, especially for it to have happened to two people now.