Another one for the military is that the vast majority of their recruits would already be intimately familiar with the interface, and not need to train muscle memory for it.

Is it just me, or does anyone else also do a double-take to this day every time somebody calls an Xbox controller "ergonomic," because they think back to the original? It's especially memorable to me because of how Penny Arcade lampooned it:

Custom components are more likely to be poorly tested, and to fail. The drivers are more likely to be unstable.

Off the shelf components are far less likely to have defects in them, far more heavily tested, and to be designed by people who specialize in designing that one thing, with far better documentation available.

Unless of course you’re buying them used off eBay for 10 bucks.

Personally, I would have gone with a Logitech G56 HOTAS set up. You don’t necessarily need all those buttons, but the drivers are designed to allow you to easily customize them (including with custom curves.) and the stick would give you 3 axis control (twist for use,)

I think the whole sub was build in. I trust more a controller made by big company mass production for angry kids that an custon one.