when it comes to human bodies there's no such thing as
normal so how do you design something like
a game controller that's meant to offer the highest performance possible to as
many people as possible do you just kind of
take the average well actually yeah that happens pretty often but if
you do that you're naturally going to end up with a design that a lot of
people really like i'm particularly fond of this one but
that others simply cannot use it all thankfully microsoft has given us
another option the xbox adaptive controller is not
specifically designed for anyone so that it can be used by everyone
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okay so here i am i've got my adaptive controller and i'm connected to my xbox
one it's got wireless capabilities but it also comes with a 9 foot usb cable
that can plug into this usb type-c port that is also used for charging so the
big d-pad here is for navigation and then i also have the menu view and xbox
buttons up here as usual but then
like other than that there's not really a lot
going on here i mean i've got these two big black buttons here that are labeled
a and b which actually have
like pretty nice tactile feedback and click reasonably consistently no matter
where you press them but like
so what am i expected to play with just two buttons and a d-pad tetris
blades of steel this is like a nest layout
okay here we go
okay cool so this is sort of usable i've got my
accelerator i've got my break i've got oh shoot
but there's some issues like press y to rewind i don't have that i can't press
hand brake or like look behind me or
or really much of anything so then odds are you'll want a few more buttons than
this luckily microsoft has given us a few options the easiest of which is
called copilot this actually lets you use your adaptive controller and a
conventional xbox controller together as
one player so for example if you have more mobility on one side than the other
then you can use a mixed grip or you can even have a friend operate one
controller while you operate the other one okay so uh here we go then the
joystick so i'll steer yeah and then the gas i'm gonna do gas and braking so then
you'd be able to rewind if i was like yo i want to i want to see that again
oh that's pretty cool running hot we're going no no i got this
i got this i got you fam like that's a truck yeah whatever screw these guys
oh so that's actually pretty cool
but the real power of the adaptive controller comes
here each of these three and a half
millimeter ports back here corresponds to a button that you would
find on a conventional xbox controller and there are actually two extra ones
that are confusingly labeled as x1 and x2 so you
end up with the x the x1 the x2 and the x box
uh let me tell you no one needs that many
x's but i don't know then again this was designed by the same people what brung
you xbox xbox 360 and xbox
one anyway here's how it works if i want to
be able to press y i just plug in another switch
like for example this one the adaptive controller works seamlessly with most
input devices that have this three and a half millimeter connection type and
that's really important because there is such a wide range of ability within the
gaming community and the perfect setup for you might not be the perfect setup
for the next person so where's my why there it is
cool so let's take a look then through a handful of the different switch types
that you could use to build your unique setup so this one right here
is kind of your basic buddy button in gator green
so we've also got though this pillow button this one's cool so it's actually
cushioned to make it comfortable to press with your head or with your cheek
you can actually hear it actuate there we've also got this guy right here this
is called a wobble switch and you can activate it a couple of different ways
so you can swipe in any of four directions or press it down
and this one right here is an ultra light switch is actually designed to be
worn and you can see here it requires very little
force to actuate so if you had it on the back of your finger or something and you
pushed against something you would activate it quite easily then there's
the little candy corn proximity sensor which can be activated without even
actually touching it just by getting very very close
finally this guy right here is a foot pedal that's actually typically marketed
towards transcribers but see i mentioned this before it does work
with our adaptive controller because it uses exactly the same connector okay so
i've got all my different options here i guess i'm gonna
start playing some mortal kombat xl okay
so if i don't have any accessories at all uh all i pretty much have is
punch other more different punch
forward back jump and crouch
which is clearly well i don't know i'm doing right
but it's not going to get me too far now i'm just sticking with the uppercut
boom okay so this is enough to beat an easy
computer player especially with you know remapping these two buttons to the you
know two things you want to do the most often but i can't even block so it's obviously
not ideal now let's kick it up a notch
starting with a foot pedal so i want this on what why
okay i've got this plugged in but like now where do i even put it uh okay let's
go with here man this is crazy like i'm all of a
sudden realizing just how many buttons there are
on an xbox controller like even if i only give myself
four buttons here the adaptive controller is a hundred bucks the foot
pedal is 25 and the buddy button is another 65
so we're at just shy of 200 and we still haven't even a
mounted all of this stuff or b attached enough buttons to issue even
half of the total number of commands fortunately though we don't have to add
one button at a time so the adaptive controller also has usb ports on both
the left and the right hand side so i could attach something like this which
is basically like a an xbox compatible
wii nunchuck controller or get this you
can also use a device that you already have lying around like this joystick
which could provide both directional movement
and check this out a whole whack ton of
buttons alright so we've kind of got all the ingredients
now but this is where things get a little bit
more complicated than what i would consider to be ideal so take the one
hand joystick for instance here we go it's got some shoulder
buttons and when you click the joystick you can actually switch layers so that
the shoulders have secondary functions not bad for 20 bucks
but how do you remap it well instead of the
joystick appearing as its own object in the accessories app you actually have to
program it through the adaptive controller
so doing this requires knowing that when you plug the joystick in the adaptive
controller assigns certain buttons to it so these are x1 and x2
so changing these buttons then affects the usb device but also any switches
that you plug into the x1 and x2 ports
over here due to that same limitation that we discussed earlier
then stay with me here guys if you plug the joystick into the other
side it actually doesn't get mapped to x1 and
x2 it gets mapped to view and menu now
so it didn't take us too long to figure
this out through a combination of checking the manual and trial and error
since there's only a couple of buttons on this thing but then
hold on a minute what about my other random joystick
which has a bunch of buttons oof
all right so the first thing to note is that the adaptive controller only
supports eight buttons per usb device so
step one is to identify which of the
more than eight buttons are even being used
then i guess what you'll have to do is just
hop into a game that you're really familiar with grab a pen and paper and then start to
map out what the eight buttons do when your joystick is plugged into the left
and then repeat the whole process again when it's
plugged into the right also if you don't like which eight
buttons the adaptive controller decided to utilize like for example what if i
only wanted to use these buttons down here instead of these ones up here
well as far as i can tell you just
don't get a choice one other word of caution too if you're
using a high powered device like ah one
of these mouth mice you're going to need to make sure that you plug your adaptive
controller into the wall so it has enough juice both for itself and any
connected accessories now microsoft wants twenty dollars for this adapter in
their store but they also helpfully
clearly labeled the back so you could just use any five volt two amp adapter
so in conclusion then there is definitely some room to improve
the user friendliness of the adaptive controller
but honestly the main reason that we made this video
wasn't to do an in-depth review of it necessarily but rather to bring a little
bit more attention to how for all their flaws
amazing it was that microsoft spent both the engineering time and the money to
make this thing in spite of the hundred dollar price
being higher than a standard controller i can pretty much guarantee you that
microsoft is never going to break even on this thing let alone turn a profit so
the only conclusion other than that okay the cynical among
you might assume they did it just for the good pr but i'm not sure if i buy
that i think i think it's fair to say that if nothing else someone or
someone's over there worked really hard on this thing so that they could open up
new possibilities for many many xbox
and pc gamers because the whole thing also works with Windows who haven't
always had many good options no it's not perfect and yes a fully
kitted out setup can end up with the same kind of ludicrous price tag that
many other pieces of accessibility equipment suffer from
but this is still a giant leap in the right
direction and it's something that we hope to see more of
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