Xbox’s new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error ‘0x82d60002’::Got error 0x82d60002 on your Xbox accessory? There’s no fix, Xbox is going to block the use of detected unauthorized accessories with its consoles from November 12, 2023.
Historically, 3rd party accessories on all platforms have been garbage. Glad to see them cracking down. There are rare exceptions like this Atari 2600 joystick:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAC-2
I have a pair that must be almost 40 years old now, still work!
Call me old-fashioned, but I think the free market offers an adequate solution for this—customers can tell for themselves which third-party accessories are bad and not buy them. Microsoft shouldn’t purposefully render them unusable. If you want guaranteed support, you’re always free to choose an official product.
Except the controllers who are doing external scripting are the best selling 3rd party controllers. So the free market has been pretty clear in that they don’t care if it’s a good product, they only care if it gives them an unfair advantage.
Letting the free market continue to regulate this means no change from the horrific state of controller based cheating that exists right now.
If PC players and PC games can handle cheating without needing to resort to banning third-party controllers, I see no reason that Microsoft magically needs to do so.
“Xbox’s policy”, we aren’t talking about PC. But yeah, once you get away from the name brands, a large portion of PC controllers are garbage as well.
Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean other people don’t.
As a kid I had no hope of affording the official PlayStation racing wheel, but I could afford the MadCatz one. When I wanted a 2nd guitar controller to play with friends on the PS2, NYKO offered a wireless one that was much better than the official ones. My first wireless controller, before the WaveBird, was a MadCatz PS2 controller that was fantastic.
I spent a good chunk of this weekend researching 3rd party JoyCons because the ones from Nintendo are basically cheap novelty toys that sell for $80.
8BitDo have been making quality controllers for several years now, and they have a whole section of their website dedicated to Xbox stuff. They appear to be licensed, so they will probably still be good?
Especially with how expensive 1st party controllers are, it can make a ton of sense to get cheap 3rd party ones. Especially if you aren’t into hardcore or competitive games.
Haha thanks that’s actually what I went with.
I went with the Wizard because I always thought the GameCube controller was fine. Not my favorite, not terrible. But I’m at least familiar with it. I saw some reviews mention that the QA and build quality might be a problem, and if that’s the case my next option is probably to try the Hyperion Pro.
Honestly I wish I could rip the controls off the Steam Deck or rip a DualSense in half.
I mean, yeah, it’s true historically that first party has been generally better in quality. Going all the way back. But that does not mean it’s cool to block third party accessories.
They aren’t blocking 3rd party accessories. They’e blocking UNLICENSED 3rd party accessories. Different beast.
Basically just means anything that is even mildly competitive in terms of price. Any licensed third party gear is the exact same price as the official accessories.
I’m not sure why you are defending moves clearly meant to fuck the consumer.