All us hardcore gamers know that the ps3 joystick design has been crap for years. It just doesn’t fit as snug as the xbox 360.

The core design flaw are the thumbsticks non adhesive texture and convex shape creates a slippery surface making your thumbs slip off in high action moments. For sports games such as NHL10 and Shooters this means the difference between deking out your opponent or getting shot in the face because your thumb slipped off the stick and hit the start button. Fail.

While there are other flaws such as the glistening plastic used for the casing, the awkward ergonomic placement of R1/L1 and odd range of motion with the triggers making it difficult to pull off holding R1 and R2 simultaneously, I will concentrate on the thumbsticks.

There’s a company called http://www.geltabz.com/ who apparently had the same gripes as I and came up with a rather decent solution for this.

Cost with Shipping to Canada

Total: $21.88

A little on the expensive side for two little pieces of rubber but that’s mostly the shipping cost. If you’re in the states you can find them at gamestop. Otherwise, gather some buddies and order in bulk.

GelTabz in package

Instructions (simple):

Concave vs Convex

You must first remove the existing caps on the PS3 thumb sticks.

I used a small pain of needle nose pliers.

Slide the GelTabz on and boom, concave sticky goodness.

So far so good, I love these. There is absolutely no slippage and thinking I should have purchased more for all my ps3 and xbox joysticks.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.