PS Vita's left analog stick bugginess

Games

So, I was playing around in God Eater 2 yesterday, and I got hit with the most annoying bug. Pressing up on the left analog stick's up direction didn't make me run at full tilt. I was like as if I were running at half speed.

It looks like this is a problem with the PCH-2000 Playstation Vitas in general. Most complaints have been around God Eater 2, but I've heard this happening with Persona 4 Golden, which came out before the PCH-2000 Vita.

What looks like is happening when the bug hits, is any up input you throw to the analog stick gets cut by (or cut off at) half. This slows your movement or anything involving that stick of course, and it's pretty annoying. At the very least, I wasn't moving down when I wasn't touching the stick, so I'm not sure if it's the joystick's neutral position being jacked up.

It could be momentarily cured by turning off the Vita (as in, the hard power off, not sleep), but when I'd go back into the game after powering it back on, the problem would come back.

In a nice bulleted list, here's what happened to me.

  • Hardware is a Playstation Vita PCH-2000, Fenrir Edition.
  • System software 3.01 (latest), God Eater 2 version 1.3 (latest).
  • Happened while running around in the Far East Headquarters.
  • Also happened during the mission Praying Mantis (level 3 hard mission).
  • First happened after completing the first difficulty 4 mission, Homecoming.
  • Once the bug happens, it affects the Vita Home screen as well.
  • A hard reset will start the Vita back up without the problem, but the bug will come back during gameplay after a few minutes.
  • Wi-Fi was on.
  • Vita was on for around 7 or 8 hours continuously without going into auto-sleep.
  • Power was likely not plugged in when the bug happened (can't remember, but it wasn't plugged in when I woke up today). It was definitely plugged in for at least some number of hours while playing, though.

Since I saw that bug last night, I went to sleep, woke up, and started playing the game again. It hasn't happened yet today, so I'm wondering if this has something to do with the hardware.

If this starts popping up again and again, I think I might lay low on the Vita for a few months and hope it gets fixed in a firmware update or something. I guess the alternative is to replace the analog stick myself, since I kinda doubt I can send it back. Even if I could, Sony might say that they couldn't find anything wrong and send it right back to me, like they've been doing with some people with this problem.