The issue isn’t “OMG, they’re using a toy to control a submarine!!!” These controllers have decades of R&D put into them and are designed for years of use and abuse. To me, the issue is that they aren’t designed for safety critical applications where redundancy in design becomes important. If your Xbox controller breaks while you’re playing call of duty, no big deal. Just order one from Amazon and you can play again tomorrow. If you’re at the bottom of an ocean trench, you’re in trouble unless you brought a backup with you.
I go through game controllers pretty quickly. You know you're an addict when you tell people that the thing you like the best about the Playstation Vita is that it is field repairable. I'm planning on showing up at the fixing clinic at my local reuse center this weekend looking for some help fixing an Xbox ONE controller because it takes some soldering but it looks like I can buy a $10 joystick instead of replacing the whole controller for $50.
So far as the engineering, it seems that everybody except for the "big three" console makers struggle to make game controllers, look at the failure of the Steam Controller and how you can't really get a high-end gamepad meant for a PC, what you do now is just pair an XBOX or PS controller with your PC. Maybe the big ones struggle too considering the problems w/ the Joy-Con.
