In the coming weeks, Microsoft is going to completely reimagine your Xbox One dashboard with the New Xbox One Experience, but the changes aren’t stopping there. Over the weekend, Mike Ybarra, Director of Program Management for Xbox, confirmed that every Xbox One controller is going to gain the ability to have its buttons remapped “soon.”
READ MORE: Let’s rank all 6 of the new Xbox One bundles Microsoft announced this week
@StavEllis @XboxP3 It’s coming for all controllers soon.
— Mike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) October 4, 2015
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Let’s take a step back to get some context for this announcement… one which was inexplicably made on a Sunday morning via a tweet. Back in June, Microsoft announced the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller — a custom controller with removable parts.
Having had a chance to get up close and personal with the controller at E3, I could see why a pro gamer might want to make the upgrade, but after Microsoft announced the $150 price point, I struggled to reconcile the idea that I could buy two and a half new games with the same amount of money.
Thankfully, being the most jealousy-inducing feature of the new controller, button remapping was something that Microsoft could bring to the standard controller through a software update.
So if you aren’t willing or able to pony up $150 for a beast of a controller, you’ll still get the best feature on the controllers you already own in the future. The Elite controller doesn’t hit store shelves until the end of the month, so my money’s on late October for the standard controller update.
