Just when you thought the third-party peripheral market could not get more crowded with over-engineered plastic, Abxylute slides in with a Kickstarter for a Switch 2 controller that manages to be both ergonomic and a total disaster for anyone with human hands.
- The stick placement is so low that you need to adopt a precarious claw grip just to play. This effectively turns your gaming session into a session of hand-cramping physical therapy.
- It leaves the edges of the actual console exposed like a cheap suit that is three sizes too small. This ensures that your expensive hardware looks as ridiculous as possible while you struggle to reach the D-pad.
- The known issues list is longer than a CVS receipt. It covers everything from rattling buttons to motors that sound like a blender, yet they still expect you to pay eighty dollars for the privilege of being a beta tester.
The industry loves a good Kickstarter because it shifts the risk of manufacturing a mediocre product onto the consumer. Abxylute is promising a lot with their Hall effect sensors and customizable back paddles, but the basic fundamentals of industrial design seem to have been an afterthought. If a controller requires you to bend your thumbs at a ninety degree angle just to move a character, it has failed its primary mission. The Nitro Deck already solved this problem years ago, and yet we are still seeing prototypes that look like they were designed by someone who has only seen a picture of a human hand.
Paying eighty dollars for a prototype that might eventually have conductive silicone pads that do not click like a typewriter is a bold move. The fact that the early bird specials are already selling out proves that gamers will buy literally anything if you mention the words Hall effect and Switch 2 in the same sentence. You are better off waiting for a company that can actually cover the entire console with their plastic shell instead of leaving the corners poking out like some kind of unfinished DIY project. Hardware should be functional first and foremost, but this feels like a race to see who can get a product to market before Nintendo actually reveals the console details themselves.
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