Logitech’s $100 Adaptive Gaming Kit finishes what Xbox’s XAC started

Enlarge / The four button types included in the 12-button Logitech Adaptive Gaming Kit bundle, along with one of its two "hook-and-loop" mounting boards. (credit: Logitech)

Last year's Xbox Adaptive Controller (XAC) heralded a new era of gaming accessibility, but not necessarily in conclusive fashion. What Microsoft's specially engineered slab of a controller delivered in options and openness, particularly for gamers who can't use standard gamepads, the device lost in clarity.

The $99 XAC only comes with two useful buttons for standard PC and console games, and Microsoft said that was by design so that special-needs gamers could attach preferred buttons and control options into an array of 19 plugs. This was great news for anybody familiar with the wild world of accessible gaming or who already owned extra attachable buttons. But trouble arose, accessory-maker Logitech says to Ars Technica, when XAC's good press and popularity drew new, confused people into the fold-and into official Microsoft Stores, to boot.

"We talked to Microsoft retail-to people in the Microsoft Stores-and they kept telling us, 'We don't know what to recommend to people,'" Logitech Product Manager Mark Starrett tells Ars Technica. "People buy an XAC, then ask, 'What [buttons] should go with this?' The guy at the store can't assess the needs. The caregiver doesn't know [from a gaming standpoint], either."

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