Microsoft seems to be pretty proud of the new controller it designed for the upcoming Xbox One game console. It has offered lots of information about the device in the past few months, including a long video clip posted just a couple of weeks ago. This week, the company released yet another clip centering on the controller, but this one is a little different.

The video, uploaded to YouTube on the official Xbox channel, has Microsoft's marketing manager Graeme Boyd chatting with Quintin Morris, the lead designer on the Xbox One controller, at Microsoft's design labs. Unlike other videos, this one shows Morris actually disassembling the Xbox One controller on camera to show its printed circuit boards, or PCBs.

The video shows how the PCBs have been designed to accommodate the Xbox One controller's battery so it can fit inside the casing without creating a bulge, as it does for the Xbox 360 controller. Morris said that it was difficult to get this new battery design to work with the Xbox One gamepad.

As a consequence of the battery changes, Morris says in the video that this allowed the lower section of the Xbox One controller to be thinner and also let the design team make the hand grip surface of the device more comfortable to hold for gamers.

Later on in the video, Morris shows the inside of the controller again as he talks about its new triggers. The Xbox 360 controller has mechanical parts inside for its triggers but for the Xbox One, Microsoft eliminated those parts in favor of magnetic digital trigger sensors. Morris says this makes them twice as sensitive as the Xbox 360 version. If you have any engineering interest in game console hardware development, this video is definitely one to check out



Posted: Aug 25, 2013 9:56 am
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-video-shows-the-inside-of-xbox-one-controller