Microsoft's Xbox One is getting a truly bizarre-looking controller with two giant buttons - take a look
- A new gamepad for the Xbox One showed up in a leaked promotional image on Twitter this week.
- It looks nothing like the default Xbox One gamepad (or any other gamepad we've ever seen).
- The new gamepad is said to be aimed at accessibility for players who aren't able to use default Xbox One gamepads.
- Microsoft has yet to officially unveil the new controller, nor has the company commented.
The Xbox One is getting an insane-looking new gamepad.
Despite its rectangular shape, the new controller isn't an attempted throwback to the simplistic design days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Instead, it's a controller aimed at accessibility, according to a report in Windows Central; the image was posted by Twitter user "h0x0d."
The two massive black circles are actually buttons, which Windows Central speculates could be programmable - the Xbox One allows button reassignment on a system level, so this is likely. The idea behind the design seems to be touch-based accessibility, for players who rely on touch over sight.
To this point, the top of the gamepad is strewn with various functions.
In addition to the two large buttons on the front of the gamepad, there's a traditional d-pad and the standard Xbox One menu, view, and home buttons. A fourth button, just above the d-pad, looks to be a way for users to switch between one of three different user profiles on-the-fly.
An auxiliary audio jack sits on the left side, next to what could be a USB port - if accessibility is the goal here, it would make sense for the controller to have a USB port, despite that being non-standard.
The controller has yet to be announced by Microsoft, and the company didn't respond to a request for comment. With just a few weeks until the big annual video game trade show, E3 2018, it's likely we'll hear more about this new gamepad in the near future.