Tag Archives: gaming controllers

Xbox finally made a Nano controller that fits in your hoodie pocket

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The Xbox controller is one of the best things ever put in a human hand and one of the worst things ever put in a backpack. Those big grips and that two-AA battery bay feel great on the couch and ridiculous on a train. 8BitDo worked out the pocket problem a while ago, and its wired Ultimate Mini squeezed the Xbox layout into a $35 body weighing about 6.7 ounces (189.6 grams). Microsoft’s answer is the Xbox Nano Controller, a little over 5 inches long and just 3.5 ounces (99 grams). It keeps all 18 standard inputs and swaps the AA bay for a built-in rechargeable battery.

At $49.99, the Nano undercuts the $64.99 standard controller by $15 but still costs more than the $30 to $35 pads from CRKD and 8BitDo. Native Xbox Wireless and a programmable Action Button for screenshots and clips are the premium on offer. I am happy to pay it, mostly because Xbox under CEO Asha Sharma has been on a listening streak. She took over Microsoft Gaming in February, lowered Game Pass pricing, and reportedly spends a few hours a month answering player support tickets herself. A pocketable pad for kids, commuters, and small hands looks a lot like that listening turned into plastic. It ships November 4 in the US and 35 other markets.

Designer: Xbox

A landscape slab with stub grips and a familiar face

The Nano looks like the Xbox Wireless Controller after a dictionary fell on it. The face is a single inset plate with a visible seam, the grips are short stubs, and the shell in Microsoft’s images is the same Robot White as the standard pad. Everything else stays familiar, from the staggered stick layout and faceted hybrid D-pad to the textured stick caps and glossy black ABXY buttons with colored letters. Shrinking a controller usually means redrawing it, and Xbox mostly shrank the drawing it already had. Colors beyond white have not been announced, though the May leak showed a black model too.

Each side of the top edge carries a single pad labeled LB over LT or RB over RT, which puts bumper and trigger in one compact housing, with the USB-C port and pairing button sitting between them. The back is smooth and matte, with a recessed label panel and four round recesses whose purpose Microsoft has not explained. How independently the bumper and trigger move is something only hands-on time can settle. The overall rectangle will look familiar to anyone who has browsed 8BitDo’s catalog, and Engadget said the leaked version looked like something that company would make. 8BitDo spent years proving the shape works, and Microsoft is borrowing the proof.

Eighteen inputs, one new button, and a few blanks

All 18 standard gameplay inputs made the trip, and the one addition is a programmable Action Button that appears to sit below the Xbox logo. Through the Xbox Accessories app it can fire off screenshots, gameplay capture, or other shortcuts, and the same app handles button remapping. It also seems to take over the job of the standard pad’s Share button, which has no obvious twin on the Nano’s face. Microsoft has not shared battery life, rumble or Impulse Trigger support, or whether a headphone jack exists. Those answers will decide how the Nano stacks up against the cheaper pads in its aisle.

Connectivity runs on Xbox Wireless for consoles and Bluetooth for Windows PCs, iOS, Android, and select smart TVs. A USB-C cable handles charging and is sold separately. Tecnoblog’s May report on Brazilian Anatel filings described a compact cloud-focused pad that looks a lot like the Nano, with Wi-Fi 6 and a 500 mAh battery, but Microsoft’s launch post mentions only Xbox Wireless and Bluetooth, so the Wi-Fi part stays unconfirmed. The cloud angle still shows up in the bundles, since Samsung’s Gaming Hub streams Game Pass titles and select Samsung TVs and Meta Quest headsets carry holiday Nano offers with two months of Game Pass Ultimate for new US members. That is a lot of screens for 3.5 ounces.

Where $49.99 lands among the pocket pads

The $49.99 price parks the Nano between the $30 to $35 pocket pads and the $64.99 standard controller. 8BitDo’s wired Ultimate Mini offers Hall effect sticks and triggers, a 3.5 mm audio jack, and an RGB Fire Ring for $35, which is a lot of spec per dollar. The Nano answers with first-party Xbox Wireless, a built-in battery, and zero cable tether, though Microsoft has not said what sits under its sticks. So the choice comes down to whether you value a plug-in spec sheet or a cord-free pad that speaks Xbox Wireless natively. Microsoft is also leaning on Minecraft Dungeons II, which supports four players, as the obvious reason to own a few.

Designing for hands the standard pad does not fit is familiar territory for Xbox, which built the Xbox Adaptive Controller, first glimpsed as the Project Z leak in 2018. The Nano takes that instinct and points it at small hands and small pockets. It also fits the Sharma era’s pattern of making Xbox cheaper to join and easier to carry. Grips this short will get their real verdict in a three-hour session, and I am curious to run one. 8BitDo drew the map. Xbox just showed up with the logo.

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Razer Wolverine V4 Pro has four back buttons, but none have to stay

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Extra buttons on a game controller can be handy, at least until they get in the way of holding it. Razer’s Wolverine V4 Pro gives players a little more say in that arrangement, with magnetic back buttons you can remove instead of simply ignoring them. Available for Xbox and PC, the wireless controller also lets you change its thumbstick caps and even take off its faceplate.

The four rear buttons come off without tools, making it possible to keep all of them, use only a pair, or clear the back entirely. Blank inserts replace the unwanted controls, following the controller’s contours rather than leaving little gaps behind. It’s a small detail, but an important one when that surface is where your fingers spend most of their time during a game.

Designer: Razer

Of course, keeping those buttons attached makes sense when you’re juggling several actions at once. Their mouse-click switches can handle commands such as jumping or reloading, letting your thumbs stay on the sticks while your other fingers do the work. Two additional shoulder buttons bring the total to six remappable inputs, giving frequently used actions somewhere to go besides the familiar face buttons.

The thumbsticks get their own set of options, changing both their height and the surface beneath your thumbs. Short convex caps provide a rounded surface, while tall concave versions give your thumb a recessed resting spot and more height to work with. Razer recommends the taller caps for precise aiming. You can mix the supplied options, but swapping caps doesn’t mean you’re replacing the sensors underneath.

That flexibility continues with the triggers, which can switch between a short mouse-click action and a full analog pull using rear-mounted locks. The shorter setting suits firing in a shooter, while the longer travel lets you ease onto the throttle in a racing game. Through Razer Synapse, you can also adjust each trigger’s activation point to suit how you play.

Even the exterior is open to a little tinkering, thanks to a magnetic faceplate that lifts off without tools. Personalize that panel, or leave it off entirely to reveal the translucent housing underneath. The working components remain enclosed, so you’re changing the controller’s outer appearance rather than exposing its electronics. It’s an option for people who prefer seeing a bit of machinery.

The software takes care of the changes you can’t make with magnets. Four onboard profiles hold different button assignments and sensitivity settings, so a racing setup doesn’t have to overwrite your shooter preferences. You can also adjust thumbstick dead zones, deciding how much movement registers as input. That said, greater sensitivity can pick up tiny thumb movements you didn’t intend.

At $199.99 in the US, this level of customization doesn’t come cheap, and there’s no included carrying case to keep the removable pieces together. You’ll have to find your own place for spare caps and unused buttons. After spending that much on a controller you can rearrange, a dedicated home for the bits you’ve removed would have been rather welcome.

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A ‘Wolverine’ DualSense controller so feral it makes the actual game look tame

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I distinctly remember the Wolverine game hype. It’s quite literally why I bought a PS5… well, that and GTA VI. And then September rolled around, the game released, and it was instantly trashed for its patronizing game design, made to feel so sandboxed and easy that some people literally played through missions without touching their controller. The game might have been trash, the graphics and the hype definitely weren’t… and while I most certainly won’t be spending my well-earned money on a copy of the Wolverine, I would buy this controller in an absolute heartbeat!

Designed by an artist by the name of FAZ, this Wolverine-themed DualSense controller is about as unhinged as Logan in his boundless rage, slashing away at enemies without a hint of holding back. Wolverine in his peak form is pure animalistic rage, and this controller captures that while still honoring the superhero part of the equation. The controller is themed after the outfit, and rather cleverly leans into the parts of Wolverine that aren’t adamantium. There are no metal accents, fake claw motifs, or anything that would feel like maybe a visual crutch. There’s just the yellow and black, a hint of distressed fabric, a few scratches, and copious amounts of spattered blood… probably of Logan’s enemies.

Designer: FAZ Des

For the unitiated, FAZ is a South Asia-based visual designer and creative director, working primarily with an iPad Pro and boundless creativity. FAZ’s Instagram isn’t a chronicle of his work, it’s a gallery of videos showing him creating designs, taking you through the WIP journey rather than showing you the final product. In an AI slop-filled world, FAZ actually shows you the man-hours instead of the final images, and that’s refreshing. Not to mention the fact that he’s freakishly talented too, using a mere sculpting app on the iPad (Nomad Sculpt, if you’re asking), to create designs as beautiful as this Wolverine-themed controller.

The controller’s color scheme is but obvious. Even the game leans heavily into the black and yellow visual DNA that is Marvel’s Wolverine, and it only makes sense that FAZ would stick to the same palette for his controller. The yellow remains glossy, while the black parts have a corduroy-style texture on them. What I personally find highly interesting is that the controller doesn’t use the Adamantium theme anywhere, not on the joysticks, the function buttons, or even the triggers. I guess it’s FAZ’s way of saying that the indestructible metal doesn’t define Wolverine, his personality when he dons his costume does. To be honest, I could totally work with that.

The controller also has a fair amount of blood on it, added to reinforce the NSFW nature of Wolverine’s work. A good Wolverine fight doesn’t see him effortlessly destroying his enemy. It sees a struggle, it sees Wolverine taking a beating, bleeding, healing, and reaching that animalistic flow state while he fights his enemy to the death. That specific moment is what this controller captures so well – not the polish of a Wolverine who hasn’t entered the battlefield yet. Rather, the avatar of Wolverine after he’s done slicing and dicing his opponents, as the adrenaline wears down.

The only real caveat here is that FAZ made this as a pure concept. Unless some third party reaches out and helps 3D print and fabricate the skins for this, there’s no realistic universe in which this controller would exist. I’m pretty sure Marvel and Insomniac Studios have resigned to the negative press Wolverine’s getting and don’t really plan on milking this particular cow anymore, especially after pouring hundreds of millions into its development. That doesn’t change the fact that this controller looks absolutely wicked, and that I’d pay a pretty penny for it, even if I don’t care too much about the game itself!

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Most Controllers Are Black and Angry, 8BitDo Ultimate 3 Lavender Dusk Isn’t

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Gaming peripherals rarely get described as gentle, calm, or romantic, words that belong more to a paint swatch than a controller aisle. The 8BitDo Ultimate 3 in Lavender Dusk earns that description anyway, wrapping a genuinely serious piece of hardware in a color story pulled from Rococo pastels rather than the usual black plastic and red accent lines every other controller seems to default toward.

That lavender isn’t static either. The shell shifts tone depending on the light hitting it, reading cooler under daylight and warming slightly as dusk sets in, a small detail that turns a static object into something that responds to its surroundings throughout the day. It’s a softer visual language built for everyday rooms, not just gaming setups lit entirely by RGB strips and monitor glow.

Designer: 8BitDo

Connectivity stretches across more platforms than the pastel finish might suggest. The same controller pairs over 2.4G or wired USB with Xbox and Windows PC, then switches to Bluetooth for Android and Apple devices, covering a console session, a PC match, and a mobile game on the same commute without swapping hardware. That range matters more than it sounds, since most gamers now bounce between at least two of those platforms weekly.

Underneath that finish sits hardware built for players who actually care about input precision. TMR joysticks pair with a Force Ring system that lets someone dial in exactly how much resistance a stick pushes back with, useful for anyone who’s ever complained that factory tension feels either too loose or unnaturally stiff. Hall-effect triggers add two selectable stop depths, letting a shooter’s hair-trigger reflex and a racing game’s full pull sit on the same controller without compromise.

Extra input options multiply what a single thumb or finger can do mid-match. Two back buttons plus a pair of remappable fast bumpers sit within reach without requiring any software to configure on the fly, while a redesigned disc-shaped D-pad aims to make diagonal inputs land cleanly instead of catching on a seam between quadrants. None of these additions crowd the layout; they simply give a practiced hand more to work with.

Comfort gets equal attention through a reshaped grip mold with a wider angle, designed to sit more naturally in hand during marathon sessions rather than fighting a player’s wrist after an hour. That redesign matters most in the moments a spec sheet can’t capture: the third hour of a long weekend session when a controller either disappears into the background or starts making itself known through soreness.

Charging avoids the usual tangle of cables entirely. A zero-contact dock uses magnetic alignment to seat the controller precisely, then reconnects automatically the moment it’s lifted off, skipping the small delay of re-pairing that plagues cheaper wireless setups. That same dock houses the 2.4G adapter and can extend the wireless signal further when connected directly to a console or PC.

Software support through 8BitDo’s Ultimate Software X rounds out the package, letting players fine-tune trigger ranges, vibration intensity, and button mapping well beyond what the physical controls alone allow. Paired with a color and finish built to feel warm rather than clinical, the Lavender Dusk edition treats a gaming peripheral as something worth caring about on a shelf, not just during a match.

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Apple is Working on Two iPhone Game Controllers Under its Beats Brand

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Concept Beats branded iPhone game controller, close-up on the right grip showing X, Y, A, B face buttons, thumbstick, and red Beats logo, with the clamped iPhone home screen visible at left, lit in red.

Apple and the gaming crowd have always had one of those relationships where you nod at each other across a party and never actually walk over. Apple makes the chips, brags about them beating a PS5 in some benchmark slide, then goes right back to talking about spreadsheets and stargazing apps. Gamers, meanwhile, buy a Steam Deck or a Switch and never think about the iPhone in their pocket as a gaming device at all. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman just reported that Apple wants to finally cross the room, having spent over a year quietly developing its own gaming controllers for the iPhone. The bigger twist is who gets to wear the name tag. Rather than an Apple logo, the hardware is reportedly launching under Beats, the audio label Apple has been slowly turning into its lifestyle catch-all since buying it in 2014.

Code unearthed in a leaked macOS 26.7 build gives the rumor real teeth, naming two unreleased devices, T6502 and T1057, each carrying its own dedicated controller profile instead of placeholder code. Both come with the standard gamepad vocabulary, sticks, triggers, a D-pad, face buttons, the stuff every controller on the planet already has. T6502 keeps things simple and wired. T1057 adds Bluetooth, motion sensors, and a noticeably different haptic engine, suggesting more than one idea is being tested at once. Nothing is priced, dated, or confirmed, but the code alone says this has moved well past a mood board.

Designer: Apple

Concept Beats branded iPhone game controller shown fully assembled with an iPhone clamped in the center, both grips visible with D-pad, thumbsticks, and red Beats logos, set against a dark background with a large red Beats logo behind it.

Gurman’s sourcing on the branding is the part I keep chewing on. He says Beats executives are leading both the engineering and the product concept, not just slapping a logo on something Apple’s industrial design team already finished. His reasoning is that the culture and lifestyle around gaming controllers fits Beats better than it fits Apple, and that the sub-brand gives the company room to use cheaper materials and a louder design without dragging down the premium finish people expect from anything wearing the actual Apple logo. Read between the lines and that is Apple admitting its own aesthetic has a ceiling. Titanium and glass photograph beautifully, but nobody wants to grip a cold slab for a three-hour Genshin Impact session. Beats, with its glossy plastics and its very unserious relationship with color, is a far more honest home for an object designed to be squeezed, dropped, and thrown in a backpack pocket.

Concept Beats branded iPhone game controller in two separated halves with the iPhone floating above, left grip showing D-pad and right grip showing face buttons, both with red Beats logos, resting on a dark reflective surface.

There is a decent trade-off lurking here too, and it is worth naming before anyone gets too excited. T6502, the wired one, is basic by design, which means it will likely be the cheaper, more disposable option with none of the motion sensing or richer haptics that make a controller feel alive. T1057 sounds like the one worth wanting, but Bluetooth controllers introduce pairing friction and battery anxiety that a simple USB-C plug-in never has to deal with. Apple will have to pick a lane, or price the two far enough apart that the choice makes sense, and so far there is no signal on either price or release window. History also isn’t fully on Apple’s side. The company has floated controller ideas for years without shipping one, and it once required developers to support the Siri Remote’s accelerometer as a de facto gaming input before quietly dropping that mandate. A leaked profile in a beta build is not a keynote slide.

Close-up of the left grip of a concept Beats branded iPhone game controller, showing the D-pad, thumbstick, and red Beats logo, with the clamped iPhone visible in soft focus behind it.

Where this actually matters long term is the software Apple has already built around it. iOS 26 shipped a dedicated Games app that pulls your library, your Game Center friends, and Apple Arcade into one hub across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV, and Arcade itself has quietly grown past 250 titles for $6.99 a month. A first-party controller, even a scrappy Beats-branded one, gives all of that infrastructure something physical to plug into, which is a very different goal from just selling more hardware. It also puts Apple in the odd position of competing with its own shelf space, since the Apple Store already sells the Backbone One and the SteelSeries Nimbus, and we covered how Backbone’s own Pro model already chases full-size ALPS sticks and forty-hour battery life at a premium price. Razer’s brand new Prio takes the opposite approach entirely, folding down to credit card size for people who would rather not carry a controller-shaped commitment at all. Apple showing up now, later than everyone, wearing someone else’s logo, says less about gaming and more about how Apple treats every category it enters late. Quietly, sideways, and only once it has found a version of itself that does not feel like Apple at all.

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SteelSeries Aeon Pro switches between PC and console without re-pairing

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There is something slightly ridiculous about having a PC and an Xbox sitting on the same desk, then needing to re-pair a gaming controller every time you move from one to the other.  SteelSeries thinks the controller should simply know where it needs to go. That is the idea behind the Aeon Pro.

The new wireless gamepad is built around a QuickSwitch Dock that can stay connected to both a PC and an Xbox. Instead of disconnecting one system, pairing with the other, and repeating the process later, the controller can switch between them from the dock. SteelSeries says the system is patent-pending and describes it as the first of its kind for Xbox and PC.

Designer: SteelSeries

The dock is also where the Aeon Pro gets its other unusual trick. It holds a second battery while the first one is being used in the controller. When that battery runs low, it can be swapped for the charged one rather than plugging the controller into a cable and waiting. The batteries are the same type used in SteelSeries’ Arctis Nova Pro headsets, which makes the system particularly interesting for anyone already invested in that ecosystem. SteelSeries calls this its Infinite Power System. The numbers are up to 25 hours over 2.4GHz wireless or 28 hours over Bluetooth, although those figures account for the combined use of the two batteries rather than one battery lasting that long on its own. The Aeon Pro can also connect through USB-C and Bluetooth, and supports mobile devices alongside Xbox and PC.

The controller itself follows the now-familiar premium gamepad formula, but pushes it fairly far. Its thumbsticks use Hall-effect sensors, while the triggers can switch between full travel and a shorter hair-trigger setting. There are 18 mechanical switches across the controller and four programmable rear paddles, giving players plenty of ways to alter how they interact with a game. SteelSeries has also avoided burying every adjustment inside an app. A small OLED display built into the controller can show the active device, battery status, and profiles, while letting users remap controls and change settings directly.

PC players can go deeper through SteelSeries GG, including trigger and button configuration, rumble adjustments, and software profiles. Then there are the smaller touches. The thumbsticks are interchangeable, with different shapes and heights supplied in the box, and the spare pieces can be stored in the dock. A textured grip runs around the controller, while its 310-gram weight makes it considerably heavier than a standard Xbox controller, though still lighter than Microsoft’s Elite model.

The catch is the $259.99 price tag. The Aeon Pro costs more than most premium gamepads, including Microsoft’s own Elite-class controller in many markets. That makes the QuickSwitch dock and battery system more than clever conveniences. They are the features that need to justify why this particular controller deserves a permanent spot on a gaming desk.

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The 8BitDo Ultimate 3E Is the LEGO Set of Gaming Controllers

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Most controllers ask you to adapt to them. The 8BitDo Ultimate 3E flips that arrangement entirely, building a controller around the idea that your hands, your genre, and your platform should decide its shape instead of the factory floor. The face buttons, the d-pad, and even the joystick tops snap in and out as swappable modules, turning what’s usually a sealed, one-size-fits-all object into something closer to a toolkit.

Pop off the magnetic faceplate and the accessory pack reveals its real purpose. A silicone membrane d-pad sits next to a tactile micro-switch version, and the joysticks come in tall, dome, and thick-neck shapes, each suited to a different grip or genre. Racing games favor a different thumb position than platformers, and for once, the hardware bends to match instead of forcing a single compromise across everything you play.

Designer: 8BitDo

Underneath those swappable caps, the joysticks themselves run on Tunneling Magnetoresistance sensors, a technology built specifically to resist the drift that eventually creeps into analog sticks after enough hours of use. Interactive RGB fire rings pulse around the base of each stick, translating movement into visual feedback in real time, a small touch that turns an otherwise invisible input into something you can actually watch respond.

The triggers carry their own bit of adaptability. Hall-effect sensors power two selectable trigger-stop positions, letting a shooter’s hair-trigger tap coexist with a racing game’s need for a longer, more gradual pull. Switching between them takes a flick of a physical switch, not a trip through a menu, which matters when a genre change happens mid-session rather than between them.

Connectivity spreads just as wide as the physical customization. The Ultimate 3E runs 2.4G wireless and wired modes for Xbox and PC, and switches to Bluetooth for mobile devices, now backed by a USB-C signal adapter for steadier range across more rooms and setups. Apple has officially signed off on compatibility too, covering iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and even Apple Vision Pro, stretching the controller’s use well past the console it was designed around.

An integrated wireless charging dock handles power without cables cluttering a desk, while two pro-level back buttons and a pair of extra-fast bumpers add inputs for players who map more complex combinations. Three custom profiles let different games, or different people, keep their own configuration ready to load instantly, and a 3.5mm jack keeps wired headphones in the mix for anyone who still prefers a physical connection over Bluetooth audio.

None of this treats customization as an afterthought bolted onto a finished product. Every swappable piece, every sensor choice, feels like it was scoped out before the shell was ever molded, built around the idea that serious players tend to have very specific, very personal preferences about how a controller should feel in their hands.

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Razer Finally Solved the Bulky Controller Problem at Credit Card Size

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Mobile controllers have always faced the same awkward tradeoff: carry something bulky enough to feel like a real gamepad, or leave it at home and settle for touchscreen buttons. The Razer Prio picks neither option. It folds down to roughly the size of a credit card at 107mm x 67mm x 23mm, then twists open in one motion into a controller with a complete, full-sized button layout.

That twist-to-unlock mechanism is doing more work than it looks like on paper. Rather than hinging flat like a wallet or telescoping outward like most phone-bridge controllers, the Prio rotates its two halves apart, expanding from a dense 101-gram puck into something that spans phones up to 7 inches, including devices as large as the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The motion itself becomes the reveal.

Designer: Razer

Once open, the control surface doesn’t feel like it compromised anything to get small. A tactile 4-way D-pad, full face buttons, bumpers, and triggers all made it into the layout, alongside thumbsticks built on capacitive sensing rather than the usual mechanical potentiometers. Removing physical contact points means there’s nothing inside to wear down over time, which addresses stick drift at the source instead of patching around it later.

Picture a delayed train platform or the ten minutes between classes that usually gets wasted scrolling through a phone. The Prio exists specifically for that kind of narrow window, slipping out of a pocket, twisting open, and plugging directly into a phone’s USB-C port without any pairing screen or Bluetooth handshake standing between the moment and actually playing something worth playing.

That direct USB-C connection matters beyond convenience. Skipping wireless pairing removes the input lag that makes touchscreen controls and some Bluetooth gamepads feel disconnected from what’s happening onscreen, which becomes especially noticeable in anything reaction-based. It also means never worrying about a dead controller battery separate from the phone it’s attached to, since the phone itself is supplying the power.

The Prio’s reach extends past native mobile games as well. It works across Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation Remote Play, Steam Link, and Razer’s own PC remote play service, turning a phone into a display for console and PC libraries rather than limiting the controller to whatever’s built specifically for touchscreens. A pocket-sized accessory suddenly covers a genuinely wide range of what someone might want to play.

At $99.99, the Prio positions itself as the opening entry in what Razer describes as a broader line of ultra-portable controllers still to come. What it gets right immediately is treating portability as a mechanical problem worth solving properly, not just a matter of making something smaller and hoping the compromises go unnoticed once it’s actually in someone’s hands.

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This Attack on Titan Blind Box Has a $25 Gamepad You Won’t See Coming

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Blind box collecting has always run on a specific tension: you hand over money, you get a sealed package, and you don’t know what’s inside until it’s open. The appeal isn’t just the object, it’s the ritual, the anticipation, and the drive to complete the full set. That formula has worked for figures, keychains, and accessories for years. The Drakong PixelByte applies it to a gamepad.

The PixelByte Controller is a keychain-sized Bluetooth gamepad from Drakong, a gaming hardware brand under the Hyperkin umbrella. Each unit comes sealed in a blind box with no external indication of which character design is inside. Alongside the controller, every box includes a matching Chibi character charm and a collectible card. The first series is fully licensed around Attack on Titan, covering seven distinct designs across the lineup.

Designer: Drakong by Hyperkin

Those seven designs include Eren, Mikasa, Levi, Hange, Sasha, and Titan, plus an ultra-rare variant that appears in only one of every 30 boxes. Standard designs arrive at 1:6 odds per box, and a full case of six comes with no repeats across the common lineup. The ultra-rare replaces the common counterpart in those boxes, which means completing the set involves genuine unpredictability even when buying in bulk.

The controller works across iOS, Android, PC, Nintendo Switch 1 and 2, Mac, Steam, Linux, and Raspberry Pi via Bluetooth. Three switchable modes let it function as a gaming controller, a hybrid mouse-keyboard for productivity tasks like advancing slides or triggering PC hot keys, or simply as a fidget device between sessions. The D-pad can be remapped to replicate a thumbstick, and Turbo Mode is built in for rapid-fire inputs.

Battery life runs to approximately 12 hours per charge via USB-C. The integrated keychain loop clips onto bags, belt loops, console cases, or a set of keys, making it as carry-friendly as it is functional. The Chibi charm included in every box extends the collecting experience beyond the controller itself, giving fans two separate pieces to display alongside or separately from the hardware.

Drakong has confirmed additional series beyond Attack on Titan, spanning anime, games, and TV shows, without revealing which licenses come next. That open-ended roadmap is as central to the product’s long-term appeal as any single series. The blind box format was designed for repeat buying, and each new theme brings fresh character designs, new pull odds, and a fresh reason to try your luck again.

The Attack on Titan PixelByte Controller is priced at $24.99, or €24.99 and £19.99, and is available for pre-order through Drakong’s website, the Hyperkin store, and Amazon. That price point sits well within impulse-buy territory, which is almost certainly the point. For a collectible that clips to your bag and plays your games, the only downside is not knowing which character you’re taking home.

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