A quick look back at when Microsoft released two very different PC game controllers

Microsoft is now truly a massive console and PC game company with the purchase last month of Activision Blizzard. Indeed, Microsoft has been doubling down on its gaming efforts for some time now. However, as we have seen in previous "quick look back" articles, Microsoft has been involved in gaming for most of its business life.

In the 1990s, Microsoft made a push into PC gaming, and not just with publishing games like Microsoft Flight Simulator or the Age of Empires series. It started making a number of PC gaming controllers, gamepads, and joysticks under the Sidewinder brand. We have already written about one of them, the Microsoft Sidewinder Strategic Commander. It was a joystick that looked, and acted somewhat, like a PC mouse and was made specifically for playing RTS games.

However, even before the release of that product, Microsoft was trying out new designs and technology for PC gaming controllers that were certainly innovative and different. One of them was the Sidewinder Freestyle Pro controller, which launched in 1998.

The design of the controller itself was made to be very ergonomic so it could be used for hours. It had 10 buttons, six on the right and four, including the D-pad, on the right, and all were fully programmable with the included software. There were also two trigger buttons on the top,

However, this controller was unique for what was inside. Microsoft had put in a motion sensor inside. You could move the controller to pilot a plane, drive a car, or move a character in a first-person shooter.

Microsoft was well ahead of the curve in terms of this kind of technology. Nintendo and Sony later put in motion sensors in their future console controllers, but Microsoft had similar technology in the Sidewinder Freestyle Pro. The company even bundled a full game, Motorcross Madness, with the Freestyle Pro to get people used to the motion control tech. You could switch off the motion sensor if you felt you couldn't get the hang of moving the controller to play games.

While reviews of the controller were mostly positive, the Sidewinder Freestyle Pro was a pretty expensive device, with a launch price of $119. Microsoft never released a follow-up to the Freestyle Pro. However, in 1999, the company did launch a controller that had a truly wild design.

The Microsoft Sidewinder Dual Strike was created to make a device that had some of the ergonomics of a controller, but could be used with the precision of the typical mouse-keyboard setup for playing first person shooters.

Instead of having a controller made of one shape, the Sidewinder Dual Strike was made of two pieces that were connected in the middle with a hinge. This allowed the right side of the controller to be moved so you could use it like a mouse in FPS games for aiming and firing at enemies. The left side could be used for moving around in games with its D-Pad.

As with the Freestyle Pro, the Dual Strike had software to allow all of the buttons to be programmed to your tastes. The controller even had its own button presets for the popular first-person shooters of the era like the Quake and Unreal games.

Unfortunately, the Dual Strike just didn't work like it was advertised. The reviews for the controller stated there was a huge learning curve with controlling first-person shooters with this device. For many gamers, it was much easier to switch back to using the good old-fashioned mouse and keyboard combination.

In the end, the Dual Strike was not a success, and in 2002, Microsoft shut down the entire Sidewinder controller lineup, just after it launched its first Xbox console. Microsoft tried to bring back the Sidewinder brand a few years later with a family of gaming PC mice and keyboards but that effort quickly shut down as well (perhaps we will write about that someday).

The fact that Microsoft was willing to go out on a limb with some new ideas for game controllers is certainly admirable. Now that its gaming division is bigger than ever, perhaps we could get some new and different gaming devices for the PC from the company down the road.

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