However, I do believe they’re entering a very oversaturated market, with the likes of 8BITDO and GuliKit creating high-quality, affordable controllers in the same niche. ANBERNIC would have to aggressively outprice them to get any kind of attention, but only time will tell.

Not really. 8BitDo really blew it with the Ultimate. They confusingly have two different "versions" of it, and neither have the full range of device compatibility that previous 8BitDo controllers had. The most egregious exclusion from the Ultimate was Xinput over Bluetooth. I still have no idea why they decided to drop that.

Its design takes inspiration from a modern-day Xbox controller and is fully compatible with PC, Steam, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS using Bluetooth 5.3 and 2.4g connection. It can also be connected using a USB-C wire too.

If this new controller has Xinput over Bluetooth, all of the compatibility from above, and a strong battery life, it might be a day 1 buy. It will have hall effect sticks, so this sounds like everything I wanted the 8BD Ultimate to be. I hope there aren't any showstoppers once reviews start coming out.

Is it bad that my first instinct was to make sure this wasn't the onion?

I don't think it's a bad idea. I've used a lot of controllers in the past that have felt worse than the controls on Anbernics handhelds. If they are willing to switch things up and breakaway from the typical from the typical Switch Pro controller look a lot of third party companies use I think it could be cool

hall effect joysticks that light up are interesting at least, i'll be curious to see reviews. There are a lot of third party controller companies already, but since it's sort of a secondary business instead of the main one maybe it'll work out nicely.

Why though? It's not innovative and looks pretty much like a cookie cutter copy of 8bitdo's design.

I hope that I'm wrong, but this seems like it's just going to contribute to (even more) oversaturation.