Physical resistance is not found in joypads(or is it available in recent consoles?), but very popular in racing wheels and joysticks.

... and in flight yokes, and in haptic styluses, and in spaceballs (not the movie) and in every other force feedback device.

Vibration is about the minimal you can do.

Adding some resistance, basically making it harder to push, is very common.

Actually pushing back, applying a real level of force against the user, is much less common but extremely effective. Flight yokes in particular can be used to push rather hard before the safety switches come on.

Force feedback is about far more than just rumble packs. Games started to go into real force feedback. In the late 1990's there were some real concerns when force feedback wheels and yokes applied enough force to potentially hurt the player It is one thing to have a car skidding out of control vibrate a little. It is quite another when the controller becomes violent enough to cause bruising. Some of those wheels could push back extremely hard. Due to costs, risks, time, and other factors, the industry devolved away from force feedback back down to simpler rumble packs.

Outside of games, the medical field relies on haptic interfaces. Having a stylus probe that you can push against a virtual heart muscle is cool. Having the probe get pushed around, fight back when you push in, and even push away when the virtual heart would push against the 3D cursor is far better.

At one point I was able to play around with some 3D haptic devices for exactly that. The program simulated a heart and some other organs, and you could manipulate them with a 3D stylus. I was told the simulation was extremely accurate physically and was used along with cadavers in surgical training. One stylus mode included a blunt probe that could be pushed and shoved into virtual tissue with considerable resistance, and even shoved back by muscle. I managed to crash their program when I got forceful with an eyeball, I was told it was probably enough force to rupture a physical eyeball. Gently stroking the eyeball with the stylus I could feel the texture of blood vessels, and I could set the cursor on the eye and the 3D armature would hold it up, just as though I was balancing it on a table or other surface.

Another stylus mode was a scalpel. There were several knives to choose from, but I have no idea about the differences. You could slice through tissue, or stab into tissue, or even rotate the stylus so the blunt side of the knife pushed against the tissue. It felt odd to slice through a heart that was beating, with the stylus pushing back and forth in each beat. That virtual heart was quite strong and could push back hard against the stylus, but I assume a real heart is also pretty buff. Slicing into lungs with the stylus it really felt like I could imagine a knife going through little air sacks. You could gently press and feel resistance come and go as you passed through openings in the tissues, along with the larger motions of the lung breathing.

Games don't really use force feedback any more. If you are interested in it (and I don't blame you, it is cool) I would recommend medical simulations instead.