Taking Advantage of the Cloud
“It dawned on me, that there was this dependency on somebody having a controller. Not only did we have to presume that someone was going to have a controller, but we had to presume that someone had a controller that was going to work where the client would be,” he said. “So, we started brainstorming… Could that work? How would it work? And just like a light bulb, it hit. First, this is going to be faster. And at that point, it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter what screen you were on because the controller doesn’t know, and it doesn’t care.” Next, Penello says he worked with the prototyping team in the lab. After about a month, the team had managed to put together a working device using an older Fire TV game controller and wiring it up with an Adreno processor. “We could tell right away that it was faster. It felt more responsive,” he explained.
Building on Old Foundations
Penello says the team continued working from that old Fire TV design. But Penello says that didn’t stop the team from putting everything into the controller. Instead, that limitation became one of the controller’s biggest strengths. “What you play is a refinement, and that’s where you really build in excellence,” he explained. “The original Xbox, if you remember the first controller, it wasn’t exactly a huge hit, although people remember it fondly. But there was a refinement process to make that better.” Because they didn’t have time to create a controller from scratch, and because of the extensive history of how much gaming controllers have improved over the years, Penello says the team was able to take the bones of the Fire TV controller and make it into something better. What was simply a suitable game controller before, now had the opportunity to become a great game controller. And it has. The use of Cloud Direct to connect directly with the games you’re playing—no matter what device you’re on—and the inclusion of Bluetooth to make it work outside of Luna have helped make the Luna Controller a fantastic addition to any gamer’s arsenal. Sure, it doesn’t have the same standing as the Xbox controller or Sony’s DualShock controllers, but it’s something that Penello and his team can be proud of. And, it’s something that Penello says they will improve on even more in the future.
