Microsoft’s current decision is a stark contrast to Xbox’s motto of “When Everybody Plays, We All Win.” To build trust with disabled players by consistently advocating for accessibility and the disabled experience only to then quickly and surprisingly remove the tools that disabled players need is shocking to much of the community.
They really trade the peoples trust like currency huh. It’s not shocking but still upsetting
It’s a typical scenario of trying to solve a hard problem with a solution that ignores a minority community.
Unfortunately, this minority community already has a lot of problems, and no one is going to support this decision outside of the company. Even if someone isn’t disabled, they can understand the pain of those who are, and might even become disabled one day. Everyone can empathize.
And all because some people have a slight advantage in certain games? Forget about it. Someone always has an advantage. This was an absolutely idiotic move.
And all because some people have a slight advantage in certain games? Forget about it. Someone always has an advantage. This was an absolutely idiotic move.
Let’s be real we should know better. Microsoft isn’t doing this because they “care about the community” and cheating. They’re doing it so they can force controller licensing and line their pockets. If they’re framing it as anti-cheat, that’s because they know that it would be better accepted than saying something about “Quality”, also it’s well known that the gaming community has a tendency to accept practices that would be considered draconian outside of Anti-cheat when it’s used as Anti-cheat and will attack those who speak out against them.
Yeah there will always be problems with online networks, but it’s easier to work with issues on decentralized ones than it is for centralized ones since one can just join a new server when it comes to abusive admins, or the community as a whole can deal with it if it’s bad enough and they’re fed up with it.
These options don’t exist for centralized corporate online play.
Hell, I’m sure most inside the company disagree. If I remember correctly, accessibility teams at Xbox had events planned and were caught flat-footed when the news came out.
Watch, they’ll just tell people to get the (very expensive) Adaptive Controller, never mind that won’t actually work for a lot of disabled folks.
I’ve only had one Xbox, a 360, ABC the only reason it didn’t turn into an expensive dust collector was I could get a third post controller that didn’t cause my thumb and fingers to dislocate, like the in the box controller did. Next generation, the decision of Xbox or PS4 was made FOR me by the company that made the controller I used going out of business. Accessibility really can, and does, make a difference in what console people get.
Probably be happier gaming on the PC than Xbox, especially if one wants flexibility to modify things on the system side to work better.
Speaking of which, I’m wondering what kind of impact this will have on the PC controller market. The XBox-style controller kind of became the norm on the PC. But if this does a lot to kill the third-party XBox controller market – because no XBox players are buying them any more – then you can’t make a controller that sells to both the PC and XBox market. I assume that people on the PC might start using Switch-style or Playstation-style controllers.
I’m also kind of surprised that Microsoft didn’t just set a “no online play” flag. As I understand it, the concern is people using nonstandard controllers to get an edge. But as long as there aren’t any leaderboards or online play I wouldn’t think that third-party controllers would cause a problem. That’s not gonna make everyone who’s disabled happy, but at least it leaves single-player games alone. Maybe the problem is that some games are already out in the wild – so won’t support such a flag – and record offline results and upload them when the network comes back or do some sort of other behavior that Microsoft can’t readily work around with OS changes.
EDIT: For PC-based game players, this may also be a good time to pick up a secondhand XBox-style third party controller if one wants them, if it’s going to create a large mass of people with controllers that can’t be used on the XBox that they want to use them on.
goes looking for a list
Yeah. This claims to be a complete list of authorized controllers.
Places like Thrustmaster make some pricey controllers – the P310 doesn’t appear to be on the authorized list, and that’s $750. Now, maybe Thrustmaster is eventually gonna go back and go through whatever certification program Microsoft has, or maybe they aren’t, but the controller isn’t on the list now, and I imagine that some people are just gonna get rid of the things if they start throwing errors.
I switched over to a dual sense controller recently and it’s great aside from just being kinda small feeling when using the sticks, would love a controller with the Xbox layout with gyro so I can actually play an fps game and not feel like I’m playing with 1 hand, also the dual sense triggers and bumper shape suck for sliding between them and the triggers are too short for use in racing games
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