I’ve started playing video games with my kid, (nearly) aged seven. Apart from the usual obstacles to learning games one of the significant hurdles is how large modern game controllers are. After digging around I chose the 8BitDO Ultimate Mini Wired Xbox Controller to get for my daughter for christmas. I picked it because it was officially licensed/certified for xbox and because I’ve had good experiences with 8BitDo products previously. The new controller is still a little large, but definitely better for her. The only downside to this controller is that it is wired only. More on this in a bit.

Look how big these controllers are

Here’s are the fronts of four controllers I’m using to demonstrate just how big game controllers have become.

Clockwise from top-left these are an Xbox Series S/X controller, an 8bitDO SN30 pro, a Super Nintendo Controller and the Mini Xbox Controller.

It’s astonishing how much larger the Xbox controller is compared to the SNES controller. It’s not even required to be this large in order to include all the buttons. The SN30 pro controller has exactly the same button and stick count as the Xbox controller while fitting ina shell that has almost identical dimensions as the SNES controller. Other than the extra bumps on the bottom from the thumbsticks the controller is exactly the same size and shape as the SNES controller.

It’s even starker when you look at the controllers from above. The SNES controller is less than half the depth of the xbox controller. Kids’ hands don’t stand a chance.

For adult hands the Xbox controller is admittedly ergnonomically superior. It’s not a bad thing that we’ve got bigger more comfortable controllers but it is honestly shocking that Microsoft doesn’t offer a smaller controller for children.

About that whole wired thing…

So it turns out that for whatever reason there exist very few non-Microsoft controllers that can connect to the Xbox wirelessly. And the ones that do exist tend to be very expensive and basically the same size as a real xbox controller. The Xbox lets you connect controllers via wires no problem.

Except that my Xbox sits about 15 feet away from the couch and also sits about five feet high on the shelf. Even if you ignore the height issue and tripping hazard that’s pretty much the limit of how far signals will travel over USB cable. So I purchased an active USB extension cable to handle the signal degradation problem. The bad news is that now I had a voltage drop problem.

Every time the controller rumbled (which it does every time it turns on) it would pull a significant amount of power over the wire, and at the distances involved (15+ feet) the voltage would drop and the controller would desync and power off. Ugh. OK let’s add in a powered USB hub near the couch to solve the power problem.

The setup that ended up working is Xbox –> active USB Cable –> regular USB cable –> Powered USB Hub –> Wired Controller.

The things I do for my kid.