The Xbox Elite Controller released last month and was very well received among gamers, despite its steep price ($/€ 150); it's actually very hard to get one right now, since it's out of stock in most stores.
The Elite controller has a steel construction with a soft-touch plastic exterior, along with interchangeable rear paddle buttons (with either short or long forms), analog stick tops (concave and convex), directional pad designs (either the traditional four-way design, or a convex disc-like design), and hair trigger locks for the triggers that allow users to reduce the amount of distance required to register a press. Through the Accessories app (available on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PC), users can customize button and paddle mappings and adjust the sensitivity of the triggers and analog sticks. Two button profiles can be assigned to a switch on the controller for quick access.
Today, David Prien (Senior Program Manager working on the Elite Controller) shared some info about future software improvements. It looks like there will be a way to customize sensitivity curves, which should help fix dead zone issues.
@burchmore500 coming soon
— David "8K" Prien (@dprien) November 16, 2015
@burchmore500 in theory yes, that is why we are still perfecting
— David "8K" Prien (@dprien) November 16, 2015
The ability to customize curves might also be available for triggers at some point.
@ColganTony @burchmore500 no short term plan but on table for sure, the hall effect vs switch makes a bit more difficult
— David "8K" Prien (@dprien) November 16, 2015
We tried to ask about the likelihood of being able to map additional functions to the paddles for example, and it sounds like this feature might be coming after all.
@AlexiousRahl In order to do that it comes from the XB1 OS team as today we do not have mapping locations for this in the controller itself
— David "8K" Prien (@dprien) November 16, 2015
@AlexiousRahl but that is an idea we are trying to get in, but new it would have to be after NXOE
— David "8K" Prien (@dprien) November 16, 2015
@AlexiousRahl yes, that would be idea, just a lot more "use cases" for a PC, so working on best solution
— David "8K" Prien (@dprien) November 16, 2015
Let's hope they can find a way to add this to the Accessories app, because it would be very useful in certain PC games. We'll keep you posted on news regarding the Xbox Elite controller, so stay tuned.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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