Do you remember 'The Duke'? The original Xbox controller that was almost the size of a compact car and really divided the gamers in two groups, one that couldn't even use it because of how humongous it was, and one that really loved it.
Now the creator of the beast, Seamus Blackley, has decided to share his opinions on what happened and why it turned out like it did. This was done in a series of tweets where he had a dialogue with another user. Amongst other things, he said this about the size: "The guy in charge of the controller picked a vendor that couldn't make the electronics small, so they made the design huge to fit around it."
Fortunately for Microsoft, the Dreamcast was still around back then and also sported an unusually big controller. Blackley writes: "The Dreamcast was our favorite console at the time, and it had a big controller that docked a tomagachi. So that made it seem less insane!"
Still, it really wasn't for everyone and in Japan where people on average are smaller than Westerners The Duke was just too massive: "The Japanese were alarmed by the huge controller; the feedback was taken and the team did an amazing job shipping the smaller version."
But it wasn't only hate the huge thing received, and Blackley continues: "Many people love the big controller; it's also true that the amount of plastic needed to make it uses the equivalent of a tank of premium."
Blackley ends his rant by stating that this is still something that he still is disturbed by: "Sorry to vent about Duke, it's just that I took such a volume of shit about it back in the day, I need to let go!"
The final post about The Duke lets us know that Blackley knew the controller was to big, but that Microsoft just didn't listen: "It was embarrassingly enormous; politically I had no juice to fix it; they ignored focus tests; I understand you can land a helicopter on it."
Did you ever get to use The Duke and what did you think about it?