Sunday, September 27, 2020
The Surface Duo is awesome, but its gaming features never materialized.
When Microsoft debuted the Surface Duo, they did so with a tease of how it would (or rather, could) work with Xbox Game Pass Cloud Gaming, Project xCloud. The Duo would display gameplay on the top screen, and turn the lower display into a virtual gamepad. However, that functionality never actually materialized, for some reason.
Even so, playing games with touch controls not designed for touch controls is always going to be an awkward experience, at least without some serious practice. So far, the most popular solution is to grab one of the best Xbox One controller phone mount clips and awkwardly snap your phone onto your controller. It's ugly, inconvenient, but hey, it works. A far superior solution is to use the Razer Kishi, which effectively turns your phone into a mini Nintendo Switch.
What if there was a better solution though?
Industrious reddit user /u/Thetincat1 (@To_Be_From) built his own controller for the Surface Duo, which magnetizes to the base in a similar way to the unreleased Surface Neo's keyboard. Thetincat1 used the internals of an 8-bitdo lite controller, and 3D printed a new shell with magnets.
Controller I've been working on. I made it to work with my Duo and Snap to it magnetically. It's using the circuit board of a 8-bitdo lite controller, then I designed and 3d printed the enclosure and buttons. So it has that nice clicky feel!
It attaches to the back of the device if I'm not using it, so you can still carry the phone and controller around when your not playing anything.
Perhaps we'll see better solutions from Microsoft itself some day to make xCloud a little bit more ergonomic, especially since /u/Thetincat1 has effectively shown Microsoft the way forward for free.
What do you think? Hit the comments, let us know!
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