On paper it seemed like a no-brainer: build an Xbox 360 controller with an improved D-Pad, do nothing else, and there you have the next world-conquering input device for consoles.
After all, while there's no official data, it is hard to defy suggestions that most westerners prefer the Xbox 360 controller over the PlayStation alternative. Indeed, a quick straw-poll among CVG's staff shows only one person out of six would rather spend their evening with a DualShock 3.
But during the early months of 2011, at a time when Microsoft was internally discussing its top-secret and inevitably-leaked Durango project, the Xbox Accessories general manager Zulfi Alam told his bosses that he wanted to completely redesign the controller from scratch.
"The feedback from our executives was atrocious," Alam tells CVG.
"They said redesigning was a crazy idea, they asked how we could even think about touching something that is best-in-class. It's already the world's best games controller."
Building a games pad is, one imagines, similar to constructing a grand piano; just a single malfunctioned key can undermine the entire design. This was why there was an inherent danger to Alam's plan - he wanted to take a forensic look at many of the Xbox 360 controller's constituent parts and see if they could be enhanced without compromising the overall quality.
"So we interviewed hundreds and hundreds of core gamers, and through those interviews we got a list of improvements that people said they wanted.
"Then we added each one of those advancements to the Xbox 360 controller, and each time we tested the new builds on live games. In fact, we were writing actual levels of games to see how well a new feature works."
Presenting gamers with just slight enhancements to the Xbox 360 controller during each testing session made it easier to hide from participants that they were holding the beginnings of a next-generation controller.
"The final Xbox One controller may not look different on the outside, but inside it's remarkably different," says Alam.
Microsoft has spent more than $100 million on designing the Xbox One controller. It sounds like an extraordinary sum, but that includes the design of hundreds of pad prototypes, thousands of hours of user research studies, and creating new tooling and construction facilities. The project dragged on for two-and-a-half years.
"The investments in redesigning a controller go into the hundreds of millions of dollars in tooling and R&D costs. Bearing in mind we started with something that people considered best-in-class, the pressure to do it right again was tremendous.
"Honestly, some of us felt like we were putting our career on the line. We were afraid we were going to burn through $100 million and come back with an under-developed controller."
The result, according to CVG editor Andy Robinson in his recent hands-on preview, is that the Xbox One controller is "a significant improvement on the best controller of the last generation".
Perhaps reassuringly for the execs in Redmond, the pad does not make drastic changes but comes with numerous improvements. The analogue sticks are slightly smaller, with a reduced dead-zone and a soft rubber thimble around the base for extra grip.
The D-Pad was constructed closer to the internal motherboard, allowing for a stronger base and thus a sturdier feel, and the 'plus' shape made famous in numerous Nintendo controllers is also present (the Kyoto firm's patent on D-Pads expired in 2005).
The redesigned chip-set has lowered power consumption - Alam tells us that an official Xbox One battery pack lasts about 30 hours and is fully recharged within about three. Double-A batteries will usually last about 40 hours, bringing it in line with the Xbox 360 controller.
Other tricks under the hood includes the Micro-USB port which, when connected to the Xbox One via a wire, will shut down the pad's internal radio and act as a "true" wired pad. Meanwhile, parts placed within the roof of the controller will allow Kinect to easily recognise its position.
In what perhaps best defines the scale of Alam's obsessive perfectionism, the screw holes on the back of the controller have been removed because, he says, some gamers can feel the ridges after many hours of play.
Button latency, as if it was an issue, has also been reduced by 20 per cent.
Ready to rumble
What's widely considered the stand-out improvement, as detailed here, is the Impulse triggers. Alam and his team have shrunk rumble motors down to about one eighth of their previous size and scattered several of them across the pad, allowing for more subtle force feedback in localised parts of the controller.
In one FPS-style demo CVG played, firing a virtual pistol with the controller's right trigger resulted in simulated recoil occurring on just that part of the controller. In another demo, which had the same virtual hand magically spawn a fire ball, you could 'feel' the explosive projectile explode from the centre of the controller and out towards your fingers.
"The palm of your hand, which is usually what picks up the force feedback first, is not the most sensitive part," Alam explains.
"It's the tip of your fingers that's the most sensitive, so if you really want high-fidelity haptics, you need to find a way to get rumble at players' fingertips."
The interest surrounding the sheer potential of the Impulse triggers is, however, a reminder that there is no innovation of that scale anywhere else on the pad. I ask Alam whether, during the design of the Xbox One controller, there was any temptation to try something completely new. The DualShock 4 includes a front-facing touch-pad and light strip, while the Wii U has built a controller around a tablet.
"Yes there was a temptation," Alam explains, "and during the process there were a number of prototypes with displays on them, with speakers on them."
"The first thing about a display on a controller is that it needs to be super hi-res, which chews the battery life much more aggressively, which will irritate gamers. The second thing is that your HDTV will be the better display, and your eyes having to move between screens to get all the information is not a compelling gameplay scenario. It makes for worse gameplay."
While for a brief moment it sounds like Alam is unknowingly criticising Microsoft SmartGlass, he is quick to clarify.
"SmartGlass is different because it's for extra information. When I'm playing Call of Duty I don't want the second screen to be compulsory. So that's why having a second screen sounds interesting, but is actually detrimental to core gameplay."
But the second-screen experience isn't the only recent innovation in controller R&D. Earlier this year there was an early photo of a DualShock 4 controller circulating within close-knit industry circles, showing the prototype carrying a biometric sensor strip.
The concept behind this is that a console can measure how stressed and anxious (or not) the player is via heart rate and adjust gameplay settings accordingly. Valve has also researched this field. With all the core companies looking into biometric data, I ask Alam why the Xbox One controller doesn't make the first move.
"We already have the ability to know what your emotion and heart-rate is, and that's through the Kinect camera. Adding biometric sensors would drain battery life, and we've already got it via Kinect, so why do it?"
While Microsoft flaunts everything that has been added to the Xbox One controller, what Alam and his team has left out is perhaps more telling. This is a project that, over the course of two and a half years, has considered nearly every possible angle but has settled on something strikingly similar the Xbox 360 pad.
That may seem like an expensive way to change very little, but for Alam and his team, every idea they tested and ditched was another reassurance they were on the right track.









