Microsoft’s new Xbox controller borrows great ideas from Stadia, Steam, and Sony

New Xbox for 2024! New hybrid Xbox for 2028! However can we simply recognize Microsoft’s leaked Sebile controller for a sec?

The $70 pad might arrive in 2024 chock-full of one of the best elements of Sony’s DualSense, Valve’s Steam Controller, Google Stadia, and — right here’s hoping — 8BitDo.

Clearly, it’s taking the Sony DualSense’s “precision haptic suggestions.”

Proper, right here’s hoping! It’s the factor I’m most enthusiastic about as a result of it severely does add a brand new dimension to a few of Sony’s video games, which simply aren’t the identical if you take it away.

Try our DualSense X-ray under, versus this one in every of an Xbox pad, to see the distinction of their haptic motors:

Be aware that some controllers have shipped with “precision” or “HD haptics” that didn’t have the influence, even when they technically featured linear actuators as an alternative of old-school eccentric spinning weights like Xbox gamepads nonetheless do at this time. The Steam Controller had fairly iffy haptics, and the Nintendo Swap haptics aren’t DualSense-level…

What’s the great Steam Controller function, then?

Would you imagine Microsoft’s “haptics double as audio system” has already been accomplished? This all the time makes me LOL:

The Steam Controller might genuinely try this. Heck, the Taptic Engine in your iPhone can technically do it, too.

However I’m additionally actually hoping Microsoft places a gyroscope on this factor, not simply an accelerometer, so we are able to have the identical gyro aiming revolution I’m experiencing on my Steam Deck and with Zelda on Swap. It’s so good for aiming bows.

What good might probably have come from Google’s Stadia controller?

It’s the rationale Sebile is such an enormous deal. Microsoft was internally positioning it as its first “Common Wi-fi Controller,” theoretically able to controlling Xbox throughout console, cellular, PC, and cloud.

The controller can try this as a result of it connects on to the cloud, paperwork present, along with Bluetooth and Xbox Wi-fi. Google Stadia pioneered direct-to-cloud by connecting the controller on to your private home Wi-Fi, and it let me seamlessly transfer between enjoying a sport on my PC, TV, and cellphone. Right here’s one thing I wrote in 2019 about Stadia and Future 2:

I fired up a session on the TV with the Stadia Controller whereas we had been simply blasting tiny minions, swapped to a desktop with a mouse and keyboard once I wanted higher goal for a boss battle, and seamlessly resumed the sport on a smartphone earlier than strolling down the corridor to seize a snack — all whereas enjoying with a colleague 5,000-plus miles away in London — with none main hitches. 

Amazon’s Luna controller additionally had a direct-to-cloud connection, however… no person actually talks about Luna anymore.

Okay, I’m studying between the strains right here method an excessive amount of and am able to be underwhelmed, however Sebile has two further concepts that catch my eye:

• “New modular thumbsticks” with “improved longevity”
• “Seamless Pair & Swap” throughout a number of paired units

First, a lot of 8BitDo’s controllers have a neat sliding change on the again that permits you to swap between 4 paired units over Bluetooth — one click on to go from Nintendo Swap to iPhone or PC. Feels like Microsoft may try this with an app, although.

Second, whereas 8BitDo’s Final Bluetooth Controller sadly doesn’t include that fashion of battery or that four-position, it does include Gulikit Corridor impact sensor joysticks that ought to hopefully eradicate stick drift — at a time when each Sony and Microsoft are utilizing the identical actual drift-prone joysticks.

(In an earlier model of this story, I additionally credited 8BitDo with making a chargeable battery that may match within the AA pocket, however Xbox has been promoting an optionally available aftermarket one for some time. Possibly it’ll simply be bundled now.)

Elevate-to-wake presence detection could possibly be an enormous deal for battery life! Former Polygon editor-in-chief (and present writer) Chris Grant tells me Xbox One controllers appeared to final eternally for those who had a Microsoft Kinect arrange — because the digital camera dealt with that presence detection position.

How possible is any of this?

Microsoft’s leaked paperwork present Sebile isn’t some pie-in-the-sky undertaking — it was already funded as of Could 2022. The leaked slide deck suggests that is the new Xbox controller, set to reach Could 2024 for $70 and bundled with each new Xbox offered beginning subsequent fall.

It’s not the one new controller that was in discussions, with one other model codenamed “Igraine,” a brand new Elite controller dubbed “Actium,” and a brand new luxurious controller dubbed “Zarasai.”

However the final two had but to attain inner funding, and Microsoft’s inner paperwork additionally cautioned that the “Sebile full product imaginative and prescient” was “not presently accepted,” laying out eventualities the place a pared-down controller would ship as an alternative.

By the best way, Sebile and Igraine would supposedly ship with a pack-in accent of some type known as “Bonnie” or “Bonnie Professional.” Is that the identify of the rechargeable battery? A carrying case? An interchangeable stick or stick topper? Your guess is nearly as good as ours.