Surely it will help them reclaim their spot as the de facto fighting game console in a scene where many people use unlicenced controllers with Brook boards.

The unfair advantage argument definitely holds water, mouse and keyboard can be like a sports car racing against a bicycle. But if someone had the budget to tackle this issue through software, it would be Microsoft. So I'm inclined to agree that it's mostly just MS squeezing money out of third party manufacturers.

If they'd care only about the "unfair", they'd put a fair, almost free, price on the official license that covers the cost of testing or whatever. Truth presumably here is also a bit more complicated, maybe third party controllers could be easier to hack resulting in an ineffective licensing system, idk. But yeah smells like money for Microsoft and a loss for consumers.

One thing that kinda sprang to mind was accessible controllers. Ik Microsoft makes one and I’m sure there’s some approved but my thoughts are what if it doesn’t serve your needs

I’m tired so hopefully this makes sense

I hope this isn’t Microsoft becoming more Apple-like. That said, if this leads to a restriction on the use of cheat-capable controller accessories such as the Chronos Zen then it could be a significant positive for FPS console gamers.

It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.

Are you sure of that? It was certainly rumoured before the release of the iPhone 15 Pro that Apple would require MFi cables for high speed data transfer but I don’t think that turned out to be true. As far as I can tell any high speed USB-C cable will allow full speed transfer from an IPhone 15 Pro. It might need to be a Thunderbolt 3 cable, especially for recording to external SSD, not sure, I’m no expert, but I don’t think it needs to be an MFi cable.

Yeah but xbox wants them to buy the xbox accessibility controller.

Fuck that, third party controllers have always been a thing. Such a dumb hill they wanna die on.

Microsoft makes some very good quality adaptive controller accessories. IMO that still doesn't make this move OK, but at least disabled people still have a supported option.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adaptive-controller

Or just allow them always. It's about the money, not about cheating. Also many games these days have cross play with PC anyways, where you can literally use a modified toaster as a controller if you want to lol.

Accessibility. People who can't grab or use an XBOX controller with their hands need to use custom controllers, including things like foot pedals.

The 8BitDo stuff is what I had in mind as well. Everything I have from them has Xinput mode, and works great for PC Game Pass and Xcloud games. I was hoping that anything that supports Xinput would be available on the actual consoles, but walled garden.

Seems like any customer rights now only exist in direct defiance of corporations and whatever unreasonable unilateral rules they set without consulting anyone else.

Same here. Ironically I'm using a bunch of original Xbox controllers on it. I just like the shape. whaddayagonnado microsoft? Your OS and your consoles are shit! You are the third party now!