It's less than it's off the shelf and more that it's the cheap brand your mom might buy your little brother as a second controller because it's half the price of the first-party one.
It’s cheap because it’s mass produced. If you asked for one you’d be charged for all the engineering, r&d and manufacturing for a one off. It would be a suitably expensive controller, but probably no higher quality.
The cheap controller angle is noise in my opinion.
There's a lot of room between one-off and a logitech controller from wal-mart. You can buy a COTS industrial or marine joystick which is tested and has a documented direct interface.
I’m not sure how an items cost can be determined by the action you might take after it breaks..
It costs what it costs because that’s how much it costs to make it and have a mark up on it. These factors are not a commentary on its durability, robustness or quality. Try as you might to find a correlation.
If you learned the autopilot on the 777 your flying on was running on a dell laptop they bought at best buy running windows, would you feel safe on that plane?
If you’re an engineer, finding a reliable part from a supplier that meets your spec is an amazing thing.
Intel processors are off the shelf, as are 555 timers, screws, literally everything.
Not every field is like computer science where “isEven” has a library that makes sense to avoid