It's true about the material. Only thing is that all of those controllers that you mentioned (to the best of my knowledge) have a hard plastic piece whereas the kobo is a five directional soft plastic and it seems like the soft plastic part is the part that is dislodging/discoloring for some people...not sure if there are too many reasonably priced options for soft plastics...but imagine the kobo having a directional pad like the NES controllers! lol
PS I'm glad you're still around dos...i recalled you having pretty 'heated discussions' with some other forum members previously.
