By Jon Porter
Introduction
This week saw Microsoft reveal some of its early Xbox controller designs from before the console’s launch in 1999, and they’re pretty outlandish.
Usually these early prototypes remain shrouded in secrecy, but these images offer a rare glimpse into the development process of the controllers that we end up holding for hundreds of hours.
In honor of the reveal of the Xbox’s aborted controller attempts we decided to revisit four other weird and wonderful controller ideas that for better or for worse never made it to market.
X-Wing-Box
The first thing that strikes you about the look of the Xbox controller prototypes is the small LCD screen at the centre of each of them.
It’s not surprising given that the soon-to-be-released Dreamcast also featured a similar screen as part of its controller. It was rarely used for anything interesting, but the thinking was that the screen could be used to display small pieces of information that could be taken off the television screen.
The feature would later be taken to its logical extreme by the Wii U’s gamepad, which functions as a fully-fledged touchscreen in its own right.
Outside …read more
Source:: techradar.com – Gaming