Gamers have always been wary of third-party game pads. No one wants to be stuck with the weirdly-shaped amorphous blob of a knock-off controller.
But in the case of Mad Catz' Lynx controller, weird might be good.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, the gaming peripheral maker showed off the Lynx 9, a modular mobile game controller for PC and Android devices. Thanks to its moving and detachable parts, the Lynx can transform from a compact pod into a full-size game controller.
Parts of the handles can detach to make room for a full-size keyboard, and the whole thing can be split apart and attached to the sides of a tablet.
At $299, the Lynx 9 will probably be the most expensive controller you ever buy (unless you were really into Guitar Hero back in the day). But this modular design could be the precursor to a new generation of gaming controllers.
As more and more people are connecting gaming computers to their living room TVs (see: Valve's Steam Machine initiative) those gamers will need controllers to play their games from the couch.
It's relatively easy to get an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 controller working on a PC, but what if you had a single controller that could function as both---and more importantly, could be physically configured in the style of whatever controller you wanted?
Many gamers prefer different controller formats depending on the type of game they're playing. I, for example, like Xbox controllers for shooters and PlayStation pads for role-playing games. This mainly has to do with the placements of the control sticks and the D-pad. Could a single controller do all that?
Mad Catz' Lynx 9 isn't quite there yet, since its design is aimed more at having a single controller that functions well with your phone, tablet, and PC. But it's a step in a very interesting direction.
