Brook only found out October 20th and it looks like they didn't even find out from Microsoft but users posting the message from their Xbox, Lol. Definitely too short of a notice, needs a lengthy delay and a big push to approve a bunch of "officially licensed for Xbox" gamepads and fight sticks before the ban is enforced. Then you also make it clear to new manufacturers that a ban is happening and they need to be officially licensed.

Got shooter fans happy, fighting fans angry, they need to find a middle solution.

Currently going through Klob's twitter to find all the updated studio spotlight art, I think I got most of them, Lol.

They should (mostly) be current versions now.

I doubt anyone or I should say no one should have the illusion that MS will do anything this gen to catch the PS5.  The install base is to big, Sony discounts were way aggressive and Sony still have way to many top games.  Sony will continue to outpace the Xbox consoles for the rest of this gen unless they do something really stupid which I doubt.  Instead, if all you do is concentrate on Sony success and not MS, you miss the bigger picture.  What MS need is momentum.  Meaning that they need to consistently bring out top content, and continue to sell GP and consoles above rate.  Success does not have to be measured how well your competitor is doing, it also is measured how well you meet and or exceed your goals and how you position your product.  You are way to focus on Sony but MS isn't really trying to beat Sony in the console space because that ship has passed, its more about bringing on consistent, top content on a regular basis which will then fuel their efforts on Console, PC and mobile.  You do not have to be number one on a platform to have huge success.  You just need to make sure you are at least top 3 on every platform.

This is a bad move by MS.  If they are going to do a move like this, they should have did it at the beginning of this gen or at the beginning of the next gen.  Doing it in the middle like this is going to get them a lot of really negative press which Sony and Nintendo could easily exploit.  Not sure who made this decision but the timing really sucks.

I don't really think it makes a difference whether it's beginning of the gen or not.

All Microsoft needs to do is delay the ban by about a year, announce that in a year from now, unapproved 3rd party devices won't work on Xbox consoles, then mass approve a bunch of 3rd party controllers within that year, starting with the most popular ones, anyone bringing a new device will have an entire year to get Microsoft licensing approval.

By that year is up, you can easily cover the vast majority of used 3rd party controllers and finally do something about the rampant cheating in Call of Duty and other shooters, by then the pros would outweigh the cons. The issue is they've given the manufacturers absolutely zero heads up and doing a ban before doing a mass approval of devices, another issue is if that "officially licensed" patch has a cost associated with it but I don't know about that.

So it's simply.

• Delay the ban by an entire year.
• Give manufacturers a whole year heads up.
• Make the costs to get the "officially licensed by Xbox" label either very small or not at all.
• Mass approve a ton of 3rd party controllers from various countries, gamepads and fight sticks.

End Result: Vast majority of 3rd party controllers are approved and rampant cheating in shooters is dealt with.

Right now shooting fans are overjoyed by the news of the cheat controllers being banned but the fighting community is enraged by their fight sticks not working, it's so easy to simply delay the date of the ban by a significant amount and work with these companies to approve the vast majority of them.

Delay things to the end of the gen and we still have games full with cheaters.

They could always just whitelist a bunch of trusted companies beforehand too...Microsoft has made this unnecessarily complicated. You can easily look at the FGC and say "okay, we'll whitelist everything here" until official approval. Microsoft is a billion dollar company, a year is plenty of time to approve a BUNCH of 3rd party manufacturers before the ban comes into force. But instead they went "SURPRISE, WE'RE BANNING THEM ALL! And we'll approve some more controllers afterwards"

Zero communication, the companies had to find out through frigging Twitter users, Lol.

The reason why you do it at the beginning is because you give vendors a chance to get authorize but you also give customers a chance to not purchase unauthorized accessories.  If you start at the beginning, people usually already may have to get new controllers like the PS5 controller that works but older PS4 do not.  Doing it in the middle of the gen, a lot of people will have invested in probable expensive controllers like myself who owns a few fighting sticks that I am sure is not certified.  Now that investment is done and its going to piss off a lot of vocal people.

A year out isn't going to make a difference if you spent more than 200 bucks for a controller and now its done.  It also puts a negative light on the whole eco system at a time when they were gaining traction.  This move will not do anything with cheaters because cheaters as we have seen will always find a way to circumvent such measures.

Why I don't think it makes much of a difference is because so many controllers nowadays are cross-compatible between consoles and Microsoft for one heavily pushes that, I think people nowadays are conditioned into the expectation that their devices should work on whatever the next Xbox is, therefore no matter when you do it, there will be people who will be upset. Of course you can't use your PS5 controller on a PS4 but you can use your PS4 controller on a PS5 and you can use devices designed for PS4/Xbox One on PS5/Xbox Series and that expectation will likely continue into the next console.

I think 1 year is plenty of time for Microsoft to pull their fingers out their ass and establish a smooth process for a mass amount of approvals of 3rd party companies, it doesn't even have to be straight approvals either, they can whitelist a bunch of trusted companies before approval and cover a huge portion of the market by combining the two solutions.

This move is surely all about cheaters because no other reason makes much sense and if it doesn't matter then why bother doing anything about cheaters at all? That's completely defeatist and there's no point ever trying to stop cheaters with that attitude, while right now, games like Call of Duty and rampant with them, hence why the shooter community is celebrating.

Imo, if this move significantly harms the capability to cheat then it's more than worth it, as long as Microsoft gives enough of a heads up and mass approves a bunch of legit 3rd party controllers and fight sticks, across multiple companies, I'd say to aim for around at least 80% of the market of the legit 3rd party controllers with either approvals or whitelists. The pros will then outweigh the cons Imo. Having said that, Microsoft has not done the above, they did not communicate at all, they didn't give a heads up, they've not done mass approvals before the ban, it's now a mess.

All they needed to do is actually talk to the damn FGC community beforehand, find out what devices are used and mass whitelist them all until full approval...Then they could have dealt with everyone else but the FGC are the loudest right now and they are a close knit group, it feels so simple to just ask people like Maximillian what is used, or get some info from EVO, Lol.

Microsoft communication is so damn poor sometimes.

Fucking layoffs won't stop.

This has been such a great year for games but literally everyone is laying off, fucking sucks, I'm anxious that Xbox will go another round too.