It may seem a ridiculous amount of money but Microsoft has revealed that they spent more than $100,000,000 creating the new Xbox One controller.
“I don’t want to go into specifics,” said Microsoft senior industrial designer, Quintin Morris, “But it’s over $100 million for sure. Between the tooling of the device, the investments we made in process technology, and the engineering work that went into it, we invested a lot to get this thing right.”
You have to wonder how much it cost to create the Xbox One and how they ever will return a profit on the console. Just for comparison, $100 million will get you an original van Gogh masterpiece, or you could buy an Airbus A320neo or support the entire population for the Republic of Palau for one year.
According to VentureBeat, Microsoft spent millions just getting the face buttons to pop a very specific fashion. The new Guide button is now flat with a thin layer of metal covering bulb underneath, this creates a soft white illumination everywhere but the “X” part of the Xbox logo. Microsoft say this also took “many” months to perfect.
“On the console itself, the lit Xbox logo is easier because you have unlimited power,” said Morris. “On this controller, you don’t. You’re running off a battery. You have to be very careful with how you light the LEDs, how much current they consume, and how to make sure that it’s still uniform. Again, the investment required is tremendous. The Guide button is a work of art.”
It was also revealed Microsoft created hundreds of prototype pads include models with a screen, a touchpad, a projector and one device that could emit scents.
“We built small slugs of different types of smells that could actually come out of a controller,” said Zulfi Alam, Xbox’s general manager. “Like, as you walked through a jungle, you’d smell the flora.”
Source: VentureBeat
Darksidesystems
“But it’s only one colour! That’s an awful lot of money for just one colour.”
gaffers101
Microsoft clearly have more money than sense!!
TSBonyman
Holy crap, i wonder how much Sony spent designing DS4 but i wouldn’t expect it was quite as much as that.
Spence1115
I’m assuming they’re incorrectly including the original R and D costs of the 360 controller, as well as production costs for the millions of these they’ve already produced, just to brag about how much they spent.
JR.
Well it cost 2 million redesign the oxo cube so maybe there’s some truth to this.
You’re absolutely sure this is in dollars and not Yen?
cam the man
More money than sense I think.
Andrewww
Sounds a lot, especially given I really dislike the design of this piece of plastic. Product design doesn’t come cheaply, but I’m not sure I would communicate it this openly.
Vallon
Disgusting amount of money, if they think this kind of information helps PR then they need to think again.
RudeAwakening
I haven’t read such b***** in a very long time. Microsoft have so much money they don’t know what to do with it!
DeadlyChipmunk
$100m and it’s still awful. Never liked it and the “upgraded” version is just as bad.
I’d rather use the Steam controller :-)