Can you put a price on a good gaming experience? Well, Microsoft reportedly put $100m into developing the new controller for the Xbox One controller.
With high competition from Sony’s PS4, it was vital to Microsoft to improve the Xbox controller to give the best gaming experience possible.
Designers embarked on radical designs which included a built-in pico projector and a cartridge designed to release smell. That’s right: smell. Microsoft was exploring ways to make game play even more immersive.
Xbox’s general manager for accessories Zulfi Alam said: "We built small slugs of different types of smells that could actually come out of a controller.
"Like, as you walked through a jungle, you’d smell the flora."
It was decided that additional flourishes such as smell and even touch-pads and cameras, would be too distracting for gamers, so went back to basics and focused on the ergonomics of the handset.
According to VentureBeat, over $100 million worth of research went into the design they ended up using.
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Microsoft wanted to perfect the way the controller fit into the players hands, so using the Xbox 360 controller as a starting point, engineers made plastic-moulded and 3D printed prototypes, each varying in 1 millimetre of width, exploring plus or minus 8mm of the 360 handset.
"That gave us the ability to test, with actual users including women and children, which width feels best," said Morris. "We tested with more than 500 people throughout the course of the project. All ages, all abilities."
Perhaps a more appropriate solution to having an ergonomically perfect controller would be to have additional handsets as well as the standard handsets sold with the device. Microsoft could release smaller and lighter handsets more suited to children, or even mid-sized controllers for women.
Microsoft could even offer customisable handsets for those really keen gamers. Would you use a customised Xbox One controller?
