When I take the Xbox gamepad to start playing Halo: Master Chief Collection, I say something I’ve said approximately 17,000 times in my life: “Let me just invert the Y-axis.” I always think of the right thumbstick, which controls the game view, like a pilot's yoke, so when I want to look down, I push the thumbstick up.
Some people...don't agree. “Interview over,” Kareem Choudhry says, laughing.
Choudhry’s colleague, Kevin La Chapelle, jumps in to defend me. “I’ve found another one!” he says gleefully. “We’re unicorns.” Even inside the Studio D building on Microsoft’s campus, home of all things Xbox, the thumbstick-preference wars rage on.
Not that fixing the controller layout makes me any better at the game; trying to drive a Warthog, I crash the all-terrain vehicle into a tree. Repeatedly. It’s not my fault, though—I’m just not used to playing Halo on a phone.
Yes, on a phone.
Nearly a year ago, Microsoft executives acknowledged that the company was actively pursuing a cloud gaming service that would allow users to play Xbox games without an actual console. It wasn’t the only company racing toward the technology; everyone from chipmaker Nvidia to game publisher Electronic Arts to Sony’s PlayStation division has been working on the ability to stream games directly to customers. No downloads, no storage, no brawny processor requirements. Cloud gaming could untether games from the hardware we use to run them, and in doing so untether people from needing to buy ever-stronger, ever-pricer machines.
