Xbox players have learned this maxim: "The Phil Gives, the Phil takes away."
When Xbox isn't working, the result looks like The Kinect, or Fable Champions, or Scalebound. Or any number of products that were cancelled (or should have been.)
When Xbox works right, and under Phil Spencer this has admittedly happened far more frequently, Xbox gets the greatest goddamn peripherals consoles have ever seen. The Xbox controller is a versatile weapon of choice across all platforms. It set the standard for what a modern, dual-stick controller design.
But before the Xbox 360 controller which defined every controller in its wake: there was The Duke.
And yes, it's royalty.
When the Xbox released in 2001, there was exactly one, giant reason to pick one up: Halo. It was the game everyone played, and no one shut up about. In 1st grade, a young child barely graduated beyond DUPLO blocks to full-fledged LEGO's, all my classmates talked about was Halo. Heck, a kid in my class had a 4-Xbox LAN setup set on the world's sturdiest table. There were 4 MASSIVE cube TV's, the size of small cars, and sturdy black boxes in the center.
That was my first view of the Xbox. For a first grader? That was technology from the future. It was CERN, the Manhattan Project and The ISS.
And the interface to this magical dimension? The Duke: A massive controller to fit the bulky box and hulking tube TV in front of it.
This morning, Seamus Blackley, the father of the Xbox, confirmed on Twitter that the Duke Controller had been approved by Microsoft and will be releasing for Xbox One and Windows 10.
Play Destiny 2 the way you played Halo: CE, so long ago, grab yourself the lethal weapon that started it all.
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