Gaming

What a horrible decision all around.

• Generates e-waste as controllers are bricked for no reason.
• Kills costly custom built accessibility controllers. No consideration for marginalized users whatsoever.
• Retroactively screws all customers over.
• Goes as far as breaking peripheral compatibility with a discontinued console.

Is it to kill cheating devices used on competitive titles? Is it a money grab? It probably won't achieve either. From a customer protection standpoint I'm wondering if this position can be attacked legally.

Nevertheless it reminds me that other time when Spencer was daydreaming about buying Nintendo and it feels like Microsoft is being a little unhinged as of late.

Microsoft needs to seriously work on quality control of their own controllers.. cynics might say they are built to fail

dang i had not heard about this unlicensed controllers thing. I find this move very baffling, given Microsoft's current position in the gaming market. This is the kind of move you make when you are in first place, because you have market dominance to shield your company from the effects of bad publicity. Yet in spite of two massive acquisitions, Xbox is still the third-place console. And after 3 years of the Xbox SeX and PS5, it's kind of looking like they're going to stay in last place unless they start packing their release calendar with A-tier exclusives.

So if Xbox is still in last place, why are they going out of their way to burn the goodwill they've been building up over the last 6 years?

The more I read about this the more baffling the move seems. It's not going to end cheating. It might inconvenience cheaters, if even that and it's only going to create negative PR for Microsoft, especially since this is impacting people who use modified controllers for accessibility issues. It's especially weird given how carefully Microsoft has tried to craft an image of being "pro-consumer" this console generation. Then again I imagine the executives who make these decisions rarely think these things through. At the very least it is a good reminder that there is no such thing as a pro-consumer for-profit corporation.

Laughable selling this as "Improving gamer experience" breaking another existing standard.

Saying this especially from the DIY angle where custom controllers are kinda the thing.

Also lol because "competitive" gameplay. Gear always wins the day - just like in meat space.

Ah well, one good thing may come from this: Plenty of cheaper second hand controllers that I may buy as replacements to connect to my Steam Link. This one isn't too picky when it comes to controllers. My current mix on that is a Steam Controller, a Wii-U controller and some no-name "works-on-all" wireless controller.

I despise this decision. I should be able to tailor my experience to my liking, especially since I don't play games online. What's the harm in letting me have a joypad with six buttons on the front? It's literally what Capcom fighting games are designed to use. Why can't I have a D-pad that works well with fighting games? The Xbox Series controller is better than last generation's joypad (and much better than the generation before that), but for some of us, it's still not good enough.

Also, it's unlikely that 8bitdo will buy a license to make controllers for the Xbox. It's the least popular console of this generation. You're charging for the right to make controllers for a game system that's well behind its competitors. Why do that when you can make controllers for the Switch or the PC, where you can sell more product at a lower cost? It's just... stupid.

Well, what little interest I had for this console is now gone. Are they trying to pull another windows phone type move here?

If it weren't for all the self-defeat, MS would be doing much better, I think.

Does this mean we can expect a glut of cheap 3rd party controllers on the market that can be used for PC gaming?

when will the industry learn that noone wants propriety hardware or software

Because clearly, we think things through before we do them

Is there some kind of DRM/authentication scheme in certified controllers, or is it just looking at the device VID/PID?

If not then third-party controllers could just offer a firmware update to spoof the vendorID and productID.