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Microsoft has approved Hyperkin’s remake of the original Xbox launch controller, and it’s officially going into production. The controller is called The Duke, and it’s even being backed by one of the original Xbox designers, Seamus Blackley. Blackley has been working alongside Hyperkin in helping to bring back The Duke, and he announced news of the controller’s certification on Twitter.
#NewDuke has gone to tooling and is approved by @Xbox THIS IS HAPPENING! pic.twitter.com/zSVA4TFh08
— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) September 20, 2017
The Duke is a nigh-on perfect clone of the original controller, but it’s made some changes for the sake of evolution. Whilst it still has those tiny white and black buttons above the now standard Y, X, A, and B buttons, the Xbox logo in the middle of the controller has been replaced with an LCD screen showing an animation of the original Xbox bootup screen. It’ll be interesting to see if they use this screen for any other games, perhaps something like the Dreamcast’s VMU function. Just like the original Xbox controller, The Duke will come with a nine-foot long detachable USB cable, and will work on both the Xbox One and Windows 10.
Personally, I wasn’t much of a fan of the original controller. It had the worst D-pad, it was humongous, and an aesthetic nightmare. It was only comfortable to use for a couple of Xbox games, namely Halo and, now that I’ve thought about it a little, Project Gotham Racing. Things improved drastically when Microsoft finally saw sense, and made the Japanese Xbox Controller S the standard for every region.
Hyperkin hasn’t confirmed how much The Duke will cost when it’s released later on this year, although it’d previously said that the controller would only be available as a ‘limited edition’ release.
