Yes, there’s a proprietary authentication mechanism. It’s been used in all controllers from the Xbox One, released in 2013, onward. At the moment, at least publicly, it remains uncracked. That’s actually quite impressive!
I think a lot of people are interpreting this news to mean that all third party Xbox controllers will stop working. Controllers from the likes of PowerA, Razer or 8bitdo. But they will still work. They are licensed by Microsoft and contain their proprietary authentication processors.
Some third party accessories like the Cronos Zen allow other controllers (Joysticks, wheels, PC gamepads, Playstation controllers etc.) to work with Xbox - and also often contain ‘cheat’ mechanisms (like automatic direction input to compensate for gun recoil in shooters). They require you to connect an authentic Xbox controller to them and hijack communication to do ‘authentication’ via the authentic controller. Perhaps Microsoft has worked out a way to detect this?
Lastly, there are some cheap third party controllers, often from Chinese manufacturers, that seem, at the moment, to ‘just work’ without being licensed by Microsoft. General online consensus seems to be that they’re using recycled authentication chips - but perhaps some contain cracked copies of the algorithm and Microsoft has figured out a way to tell?
It’s these last two categories that Microsoft is presumably cracking down on.
8bitdo (and the other major 3rd party controller makers) have a license. Their controllers are even advertised on Microsoft’s site - e.g. www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/…/sn30-pro
@ArugulaZ points out correctly that this controller does not with with Xbox - it’s for mobile. Oops. There are some that do though - see later replies!]
Mass Effect Andromeda! I just played through the ‘Legendary Edition’ of the trilogy, and despite what I’d heard about Andromeda, I couldn’t resist it at under $4 at GameStop.
…and I’m actually enjoying it a lot!
I wonder if it might actually get better reviews if it were released today. We’re more used to open worlds, and it’s less expected that you’d try to finish every little quest line you are presented with (‘Oh, don’t do that - that’s just for people who really like collecting things!’), and more expected that you’d jump around between places and not ‘complete’ one area before going on to another.
I’m not really seeing the problem with facial animations that some reviewers complain very loudly about - and some people online say rendered the game ‘unplayable’. Maybe I’m just not attuned to see it? Or maybe they updated it after release?
Was a sleeper - not sure it still counts, because it caught some good press, but Pentiment. Way more fun and engrossing than any short description makes it sound. And I feel like I even learned a bunch from it!
It’s Exhausting Trying To Read Video Game Website Headlines (aftermath.site) angielski
Every day I wake up in the morning, get on the internet and feel increasingly like Batman trapped in an elaborate puzzle room by the Riddler.
Microsoft has control issues (www.gamesindustry.biz)
The effort to squash unlicensed controllers hurts plenty of paying customers, and might not even achieve its goals
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 10th
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