Scuf is not exactly known for making durable controllers if their Playstation offerings are anything to go by (I’m on my 3rd Vantage and it’s just not broken enough to be usable), so the prospect of Microsoft’s industrial grade production appealed to me—I am sad to hear the durability isn’t as great as I’d imagined.
the Instinct Pro sounds like a pretty good input device for Apex Legends though
$130 is a good deal though
I have basically never had a stock controller wear out on me and yet the expensive ones always seem to have build defects
Bear in mind a lot of the Instinct’s design is the OEM Microsoft design. Just eyeballing it some of the tooling looks the same.
It sucks that paddles aren’t standard this generation. They really ought to be if every 3D camera is a shrug.
It’s like Toyota Prius vs Tesla Model S
It seems it’s fundamentally tough for small batch manufacturing to compete on the durability/consistency axis of quality, and also people who can afford a luxury controller/car usually also have a normal one in a drawer/garage so they aren’t that angry when it breaks down
I think that’s it, they extended the design complexity beyond their ability to guarantee quality. The features that matter to me extend durability (the chromed analog sticks prevent wear from rubbing against the bowl edges) unless I get unlucky and snap a bumper from a poorly-designed tension point.
Someone should tell controller modders about Teflon grease but it ain’t gonna be me
Just saw the Xbox Design Labs controllers have chromed finish options again on the X|S pads btw
Aw, they’ve got it for the triggers and dpad but not the sticks
i was thinking about this, i think bat tops look much more comfortable than ball tops.
i have a qanba drone and idly thought i might like to put a bat top in it someday.
It always throws me when folks link the ball tops to Japanese arcades and the bat tops to US ones because I only really encountered the bats on Neo Geo cabinets back when, so they felt really exotic.
the power supply for my CSL DD has shipped! it’s happening!
I defintiely remember them on the SF2 and MK machines I played on, but older US arcade games usually had a ball top, yeah.
in the uk all the cabs i ever played on were bat top, concave buttons until like the early 00s when sanwa stuff started showing up
i remember ball top and concave here, the alternatives still seem wild to me and i’m not sure if i’ve touched them
i feel like i always saw ball top sticks on older machines, while contemporary machines would have bat sticks. i always associated ball tops with being kind of worn down, a little cheap maybe? the even more dimly lit, dirty floored section of the arcade
but i’m trying to recall 20+ year old memories, so who knows?
This is also exactly my memory in the mid-Atlantic US, but I also didn’t seek out arcades and spend a lot of time in them
I’m such a folk.
I distinctly remember all the Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats having bat tops locally. Other machines might have had ball tops but if so I didn’t notice. Ball tops definitely got associated with ‘home sticks’ and ‘Japanese arcades’ for me.
yeah alll the machines i played had bat tops growing up and they’re way fucking better and comfier for me. also when you murder someone in games you can unscrew it and turn it upside down and put it next to your eye because youre an asshole
I’m looking up early 90s cabinets and am shocked at how many seemed to be stock with bats. NBA Jam had bats!? Maybe I’m joystick blind?
wait idgi
ohhh wait like a teardrop. wicked