00:00Hey everybody, I'm Graeme Boyd, Xbox Live's AC Bongos and one of the things I'm most excited about about the
00:04Xbox One is this incredible new Xbox One controller.
00:08So I came here to the Xbox Design Studio to speak to someone who can tell me all about it,
00:12Quinton Morris. How are you, Quinton?
00:14I'm doing really well.
00:14Good, tell me about your role on the Xbox One controller.
00:17So I'm a senior product designer with the Xbox design team and I was the lead on the Xbox One
00:22controller project.
00:23Excellent, so just the man to talk to. I want to talk to you about three things, right? Precision, comfort
00:27and realism.
00:28Core gamers know there's a lot of different ways you hold the controller.
00:31You know, as a first-person shooter guy, I'm really about how fast can I pull this trigger?
00:35You know, how fast can I hit this bumper to active reload?
00:38Having those experiences, you understand kind of what's important to a core gamer and what's really going to influence their
00:43gameplay.
00:44This sits in the hand better, right? There's some changes here that then give you a better range of motion,
00:48right?
00:48Which is going to improve your gameplay.
00:50First off, the battery now exists inside the body of the controller, which was technologically a very difficult thing to
00:55do.
00:56You can see this U-shaped PCB is designed to really fit around that battery.
01:01And PCB stands for?
01:02Printed circuit board.
01:04Of course, I knew that. I just wanted to make sure everyone else did.
01:06Moving the battery inside really enabled thinning out this section of the body.
01:10And doing that opened up the possibility to create this really great grip surface that exists here.
01:16So that means that you can now grip it with a lot less effort and grip it into the top
01:21of your hand.
01:21That leaves this whole thumb joint totally free to access the controls.
01:25So you're going to be able to get around the controls way faster than you ever have before.
01:29So if you're playing eight, ten hour sessions of whatever game, you'll just be able to play better and focus
01:34more on what's happening in the game as opposed to how you're controlling it.
01:37Tell us about how the Xbox One controller interacts with Kinect.
01:40We've added some IR LEDs to the controller. You just press the bind button on the controller while you're sitting
01:46on your couch in view of Kinect, and the controller will just connect.
01:50So if I'm playing FIFA with my mates, we're passing the controller around between games, Kinect is automatically going to
01:55know that that controller's been passed, who's holding the controller as well as which controller.
01:59Yeah, so you can get in and focus on playing the game and enjoying your time with your friends.
02:03Real hardcore FPS players, they love wired controllers, right? That's all they play with.
02:08You can connect this with USB to the Xbox One and it instantly becomes a wired controller.
02:12Right. This is new. This is something we haven't done before, but as soon as you plug it in, all
02:16the data will be sent over the cable.
02:18So you're getting now a wired and wireless controller in one.
02:21Tell us about some of the changes you've made to make sure that it feels more comfortable.
02:25We reduced the spacing just a little bit between the ABXY as well as on the bumper and trigger to
02:31really make it quicker to get around.
02:33Using this controller, without changing the way you game, you'll be a faster, better gamer.
02:37And there's changes to the controllers to make your gameplay experience more realistic.
02:41The triggers have an exciting new feature we call impulse triggers.
02:44They're rumble motors that exist inside of the trigger itself.
02:48It offers haptic feedback to the tip of your finger, which is the most sensitive part of your hand.
02:53By combining these two extra motors with the current rumble motors that we had in the previous generation,
02:58we can now create richer haptic effects that have directionality to them.
03:02So you can communicate forward, back, left, right.
03:05A really subtle effect could be that when you run out of bullets, you feel the empty chamber, right?
03:09So you know immediately that you've run out of bullets and the next thing you got to do is reload.
03:13So another big one is the magnetic trigger sensor.
03:16We've eliminated all the mechanical parts that used to be in the old controller and replaced it with a mechanical
03:21digital sensor.
03:22So it means that it's twice as sensitive as it ever was before.
03:25So in Forza, when you're trying to feather the gas, you'll have that much more control over that gas pedal.
03:30And let's talk about this D-pad as well, because it's pretty significant changes here, right?
03:34The pivot point for the D-pad itself had to be as high as possible.
03:37By moving that pivot point up, we get really nimble action.
03:41We've combined that nimble action with a new type of switch under the D-pad itself.
03:45It's got really crisp feedback.
03:47So you know immediately once you've pressed it.
03:49All right, let's talk about the thumbsticks as well, right?
03:51Something that when you're playing games, you're connected to the whole time.
03:54The thumbsticks, we made them slightly smaller in diameter.
03:56By making them smaller, your thumb's closer to the center.
03:59We've maintained the ridge that was so characteristic of the Xbox 360 controller,
04:04which is a great feature for pulling back.
04:07And added texture to the outside so that when you're pushing, you can get really good grip.
04:12So the other improvement that we made was we were able to dramatically reduce the dead zone in the stick
04:17itself.
04:17By reducing the dead zone, we've increased accuracy and precision dramatically.
04:21One of the things I've heard from gamers that I speak to is that they love the Xbox 360 controller
04:26so much.
04:26They're a little bit worried that this is going to be slightly different.
04:29We've been working on this for two years.
04:30And our main goal was to make sure that the Xbox One controller was familiar.
04:35And we talk about the 40 improvements, and most of those are fairly small things.
04:39When you pick it up, it doesn't feel like a totally different controller.
04:42It feels like a better controller.
04:44Our design team is 30 people, and that includes human factors, ergonomists.
04:48Everybody plays games.
04:50All the people we recruited for all the studies are either just regular gamers or, you know,
04:56competitive gamers or people that have just been playing games for decades.
04:59I mean, this was designed for gamers by gamers.
05:02Great.
05:02Well, Quinton, thank you so much for your time.
05:04I think we've talked about it enough though, right?
05:06I want to get my hands on this controller and actually play some games.
05:08Yeah, let's do it.
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