I have no idea if they actually had spares, but there's something to be said for having three $30 off the shelf parts over one $200 custom part, provided that failure isn't immediately catastrophic.

Plus Logitech gear is, in my experience, pretty well made. My Logitech joystick lasted easily ten years, and I've got a Logitech mouse that's about twelve years old and still works fine.

Maybe it still is atmospheric pressure…

I mean there is something to be said for KISS (keep it simple stupid) principles. Especially in an environment that is very unforgiving. In fact in SCUBA there is even a rebreather named as such [1].

And something like an xbox controller is both well engineered and quite intuitive. That said...you are going to want redundancy.

For example I believe SpaceX Dragon uses largely off the shelf computers running linux [2], and not the older rad hardened versions many other space programs require. That said...they also setup them as a to work in triplicate to ensure quorum on the data validity and then have a backup set fo computer in case they cant get quorum out of the primary.

[1] https://www.kissrebreathers.com/

[2] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9243/what-computer-and-software-is-used-by-the-falcon-9

It's even funnier than that. Appearently, for drones they made drone pilots design their optimal input device, and the result was basically a replica of a commonly used Xbox controller. The legal department was dumbfounded because there's obviously protections for an Xbox controller and they just resorted back to the original.

military used Xbox controller

Isn’t the Xbox controller only used for the periscope?

Frankly the biggest safety issue is that they have no transponder. So even if something goes wrong and they have to surface, rescuers are stuck looking for a drifting needle in a 41 million square mile haystack.

And the view window was only rated for 1300 meters, while they’ve been going down to 4000 meters. https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-faced-lawsuit-depths-safely-travel-oceangate

I thought I read somewhere that they're not making a profit yet. I mean just the fuel costs alone have to be astronomical

The article states that they've been lost before, but that they still had contact with the surface. Sounds like this is the first time comms has been lost.

What doesn’t surprise me is that wealthy adventure enthusiast billionaire would think it’s okay to cheap out on something supposed to sustain his life underwater. $30 game controller? Plumbing pipe for ballast? Off the shelf monitors? Is that picture showing they done even have any seats or way to strap in safely? Bolted in from the outside without a safety escape built in? I feel they would have been better off trying to go at it with an old timey diving bell attached to the surface with an air hose. That would have been even cheaper than this underwater coffin they built. At least then they would have been tethered and retrievable.