New Xbox Controller Might Have a Touchscreen, Crib the Wii U

Not much is currently known about the forthcoming Xbox console being cooked up inside Microsoft, but a new rumor recently surfaced about the console’s controller. The story goes that Microsoft engineers are taking a page from the Wii U and adding a touchscreen to their controller in addition to the traditional buttons and triggers. 

Rumored to be announced this coming June at E3 and speculated to be in stores some time in 2013, it’s pretty much anything goes as far as Xbox rumors are concerned. The whisperings about a touchscreen controller came from a recent issue of Xbox World Magazine, quoted by NeoGAF:

The next Xbox will be a matt-black [sic] media hub with a mission to bring games to life in your living room with augmented reality, directional sound, and a four-player finger-tracking Kinect. We told you all that last month. This month, our sources tell us it will have a touchscreen, too.

Microsoft are experimenting with a tablet-like controller with a shape closer to Sony’s sleek Vita handheld / Apple’s iPad than Wii U’s bulky unit – it’s an HD screen surrounded by the traditional 360 buttons and sticks.

On 360 that touchscreen will be second only to Kinect in how you operate your console. It could be a remote control when you’re watching TV, a browser when you’re on the internet, extra buttons and information when playing a game or a portable display when you want to take your game with you.

Of course, none of this is confirmed by any stretch of the imagination. However, considering that both Sony and Microsoft were caught flat-footed by the popularity of the motion control-based Wii, it’s appealing to think that they would be working to counter what Nintendo plans for the WiiU. Whether consumers think that touchscreens is how they want to interact with their console games is another question altogether.

(Xbox World Magazine via NeoGAF via Geek.com)

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