[jcranmer]

> What I didn't understand is the focus on the electronics and the control system, those are irrelevant if the hull isn't going to work out.

Two reasons, I think. First, the (apparent) shoddiness of a control mechanism is easily understood, whereas the reasons why carbon fiber makes a poor choice for a pressure hull are more difficult to understand. Consequently, the use of a game controller is a more salient example of a company cutting corners than their choice of material in the pressure hull. (This is somewhat undermined by the fact that a game controller actually isn't necessarily a problem--Ars Technica ended up running articles on consecutive days with the first one being a tee-hee-they're-using-a-game-controller article and the second one being a why-the-military-uses-game-controllers article.)

The second reason may be that some people would rather focus on the potential failure that admits a possibility that the inhabitants are alive instead of potential the failure that guaranteed their death before the search started.