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The story of the Duke, the Xbox pad that existed because it had to
Denise Chaudhari had never touched a gamepad before stepping onto Microsoft's campus as a contractor. The first woman to join the Xbox team, Chaudhari had studied ergonomics and industrial design at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design but didn't have any experience with joysticks. That's part of why Xbox's Jim Stewart was so excited to bring her on board: Her ideas wouldn't be based on preconceived notions of what a gamepad had to be. It was early 2000, and the company was preparing to enter the gaming world with the Xbox. In Nov. 2001, the console was released in North America alongside the Duke, a controller that seemed comically large compared to its contemporaries. Within a year, the oversize gamepad was abandoned by Microsoft and replaced with a smaller model, but the Duke has had an impact on every controller since.
Original Xbox's huge controller is returning for current platforms
Original Xbox owners got a powerful yet eccentric machine in Microsoft's first stab at console gaming. The system itself was a massive VCR-sized slab of circuits and plastic, but it was the comically oversized controller that most baffled gamers. Yet fans look back fondly at the beastly peripheral, nicknamed "The Duke." Unbeknownst to most, one of its original designers has been secretly working to revive the controller for Xbox One and Windows 10 -- and Microsoft just gave it the green light.
Steer your anti-sniper bot with an Xbox pad
Meet the RedOwl, a $150,000 robot intended to hunt enemy snipers for the U.S. military. The RedOwl boasts impressive precision detection, sharpshooter pathfinding, and the ability to "read a nametag from across a football field."This powerful robot is run via a keyboard, but how does one steer a mega-expensive piece of military equipment? With a modified Xbox controller, of course. Unfortunately, they don't specify which model -- we're hoping it's either the 360 model or the original Xbox's smaller S variant. Sorry, but we want comfort when steering robots worth many times our annual salaries.[Thanks, killr0y and Devastator; RedOwl concept image credit]
Long live the Duke! 360 controller gets transplant
The "Duke" is the name the comically monstrous Xbox controller has been mockingly lovingly come to be known by. After being replaced by its smaller, sexier cousin, Type S, the Duke has assumed its rightful throne on lists of terrible controller design everywhere. Apparently, some gamers would rather die than see this happen! One gamer, for example, replaced the analog thumbsticks on his 360 controller with the counterparts from the Duke. He didn't go so far as to use the horrible D-pad, so he used the Type-S' for that. The end result is what you see above: a Frankenstein's monster of a controller, animated by more sheer madness than any science we know of. [Via del.icio.us]
