Player two enters the game! Xbox vs PlayStation accessible controllers

Cast your minds back if you will to late stages of 2018, long before the cost of living crisis or Covid-19, life was pretty good around this time. The absolute geniuses at xbox were levelling up the world of gaming with their accessible game pad; released in September 2018 the Xbox Adaptive Controller was, in my opinion, the gaming equivalent of the first person to think round things on carts would make pushing them easier. Not the greatest stretch to go from we have controllers that most people can use to, let’s design one more people can use but very much a step in the right direction.

Now FIVE years after the fact Sony has FINALLY cottoned onto the fact that some of their player base may need a more accessible controller, so I guess better late than never right? Well perhaps perhaps not; we will have to wait and see because it only got announced a couple of weeks ago and there is currently no release date and very limited details on functionality other than a couple of stylish pictures you can check out here.

There are a couple of things I worry about with this new controller; a) the cost a standard PS controller will set you back a whopping £59.99, whereas an Xbox S/X controller will cost you £49.99, the Xbox Adaptive controller costs £74.99 a £25 mark up on the standard controller, if Sony does the same with their adaptive controller then the cost is going to be an eye watering £84.99. And; b) that Sony will make it proprietary tech that doesn’t have the ability to have other third party accessories connected to it.

Maybe I’m being pessimistic or is it realistic (some kind of istic)? Anyway while we’re waiting for Sony to catch up *discretely checks watch, we might as well have proper look at the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Released 6th of September 2018, the Xbox Adaptive Controller is a pretty cool piece of kit; its design was born from mad geniuses at Microsoft the Xbox gaming community, and a range of gaming and disability charities including The AbleGamers Charity, The Cerebral Palsy Foundation, SpecialEffect, Warfighter Engaged.

The fact that it was developed with the community feedback isn’t its only impressive boast, the controller is compatible not only with the latest generation of Xbox the X and S, but with the previous generation Xbox One and with Windows pc versions 7, 8.1 and 10/11. Along with this compatibility with different consoles and pc’s it is also compatible with Xbox copilot, which allows function to be split across two controllers. Add to this re-mappable buttons, nineteen, that’s right nineteen, 3.3mm ports for custom buttons and two usb 2.0 ports for custom joysticks and you are on for a winner.

Now there is one down side and only one that i can really call Xbox on and that as usual is the price tag at £74.99 which is a £20 mark up on the standard controller. I can however kind of forgive the price tag for several reasons; firstly the ones mentioned above, also the pièce de resistance (yes I googled the spelling of that), Xbox have released the design specification for the inputs to the Adaptive Controller. This is huge; they could quite easily keep this to themselves and make a bank of money from all of the peripherals they could sell. Instead they’ve released the spec (found here) so that any Tom, me or Harry can create their own custom inputs, and there are plenty of people out there already making the best of this.

You don’t have to take my word on how good the Xbox controller is check out one of the many reviews online. I think this review from Dan and Brad at All Access Life speaks volumes.

For those of you too eager to wait for the the new PS controller, there is an alternative; the Titan 2 controller adaptor which allows you to plug different controllers into your consoles, so you could for instance use an Xbox controller of the accessible variety on say a Play Station 5. There is a caveat with this, in that the devices are expensive and getting hold of one is like trying to get hold of gold plated rocking horse s***. Great piece of kit though if you can grab one. You could also use this to use the original Xbox controller on the Xbox 360.

A final thought on this. Big tech companies generally get a lot of stick when they get it wrong, but I think we should applaud Microsoft and Xbox for their initiative.