No Barriers to Fun!

We met our friend Giddeon at the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When he first sat down with the AbleGamers crew, Giddeon didn't want to play any games. He told us that with his disability gaming was difficult. Giddeon has a rare disease that caused the growth of his arms .. Read More
A Window to the World

Shepherd University invited the AbleGamers Foundation to come on campus and do one of our Accessibility Arcades for the students and local disabled community. The event was a roaring success with hundreds of children and adults coming out to see the technology and in some cases experience gaming the first time. Read More

OneSwitch: Microsoft Aren't Listening!

Written by Barrie Ellis

Published on 21 March 2008

....and nor are Sony and Nintendo, but one at a time...

I'm getting really fed up with Microsoft's restrictive attitude to controllers on the Xbox 360. Some years back, when Microsoft were forming their console world domination master-plan, they decided it would be wise to put blocks on 3rd parties creating controllers for their console without their say so. A money making ploy. The result today is a pitiful choice of alternative controllers - perhaps the worst for any console I've seen in the past 20 years.

Microsoft later started to show a little recognition of this, stating that they "need to bring more people in" with more accessible controllers. So far, all I can see is an arcade stick that won't work on most 360 games and some rip-off BUZZ controllers that have been used with quiz games.

There has been a ray of hope in the form of an unofficial Playstation controller adapter, called the XFPS 360 or XFPS Sniper from non-approved XCM. It's a good device in my experience, allowing you to connect many of the huge range of Playstation controllers that are available. Unfortunately it is very expensive and requires a wired controller (to get around Microsoft's anti-non-approved controller circuitry). So you are looking at about £80/$160/100 Euros just to be able to use an alternative controller that might work for you.

What's worse is in Microsoft deliberately trying to put a stop to this with their latest wired controllers. According to Play-Asia - this adapter "Does not work with latest Xbox360™ wired controller model X811616-005 ".

Plus points for the Xbox 360 come in a recent price drop - but what use is that to the many people that can't play on one? Solutions? If Microsoft could bring out an official Playstation controller adapter for £20/$40/25 Euros that doesn't need a wired controller - all would be forgiven! But do they care?