For many people, there was nothing that really had to be done to improve upon the Xbox 360 controller. The D-Pad could use a bit of an overhaul, but when you’re dealing with what's likely the most popular input device in North America, sinking too much money into making something entirely new seems a bit wasteful. Microsoft didn’t see it that way, though. Even if some of the executives thought it a crazy idea, Xbox Accessories general manager Zulfi Alam knew that plenty of new, exciting things could be done with the current model.
“We interviewed hundreds and hundreds of core gamers, and through those interviews we got a list of improvements that people said they wanted,” Alam said to CVG. "Then we added each one of those advancements to the Xbox 360 controller, and each time we tested the new builds on live games. In fact, we were writing actual levels of games to see how well a new feature works."
Apparently, the major changes are on the inside of the controller. At first glance, you wouldn’t think that it took $100 million to produce the new Xbox One device, but that’s right around the amount that Alam estimates.
"The investments in redesigning a controller go into the hundreds of millions of dollars in tooling and R&D costs. Bearing in mind we started with something that people considered best-in-class, the pressure to do it right again was tremendous,” he continued. "Honestly, some of us felt like we were putting our career on the line. We were afraid we were going to burn through $100 million and come back with an under-developed controller."
There were more than 100 iterations of the controller before something final was chosen. With a budget that high, let’s just hope everyone's happy with the result this November.
