Xbox has made steps into making gaming a more accessible space for everyone with their latest controller. It’s called the Xbox adaptive controller and is built with disabled gamers in mind.
Gaming has always been an immersive experience and being able to control your character perfectly helps create an even more immersive experience. Gamers who have disabilities obviously have a harder time using a regular controller which makes the immersion worse for them in particular. This new controller helps to combat that and make gaming as immersive as possible to everyone no matter what their disability.
The controller has many other parts to it not just the rectangular pad you see in these pictures. There are separate buttons and pads that can be plugged into the central hub to make gaming accessible to all gamers whatever their disability.
Xbox aren’t just stopping their – Craig Kaufman said this.
“we’re looking at Xbox making a controller that can take mouth inputs. Like, this is further than we thought it would go”
It shows that Microsoft aren’t just stopping there and are looking to get people with even more severe disabilities into the gaming world.
Check out the video below to see the controller in action.
The prices for these add ons range from $65 to $399 for the more complex pieces of equipment. However it is compatible with the regular game pad so most disabled gamers will be able to use the regular controller and the new one to be able to game easily with.
Evelyn Thomas who is Microsoft’s accessibility programme manager at Xbox had this to say about the new release.
“There are millions of gamers out there with a wide variety of disabilities. That’s why we feel this device is so important,”
“This is not a niche product.”
We think this is a great step from microsoft and would love to see many other gaming companies follow suit.