Back in the day, if you wanted a specially colored game controller, too bad. Gamers were stuck with the system default (unless you bought a cruddy third-party pad, of course). The N64 was the first system to buck that trend, launching 20 years ago with six default controller colors. This many years (and consoles) later, the novelty has worn off.

Or, has it? At this year's E3, Microsoft announced that players could head to Xbox Design Lab to really customize their Xbox One controllers by letting them pick seven discrete color options spread across its body and buttons. We had a chance to see a few sample pads during the conference, and now we've gone and gotten ourselves a pair of fully customized pads.

As a result, we've observed exactly how Xbox Design Lab's $80-$90 controllers look from Web-store interface to couch-combat reality—but we've also gotten to see their biggest Bluetooth-related shortcoming for now.

Buncha spoilsports!

Xbox Design Lab works by letting shoppers choose colors for seven separate controller elements. Four of those aspects can be outfitted with any of the 15 colors available in the shop: the front plastic shell, the back plastic shell, the d-pad, and the top trigger/bumper assembly.

You can make a lot of wild color combinations with these four elements times 15 colors, but how they'll visually pop is limited by the remaining options. The joysticks get only seven color options, with four of those being different shades of "pretty much black." The ABXY and menu buttons are limited to either the default spread of "colored letters on black" or mixes of white and black.













I spent about a week hemming and hawing over what designs I'd make with the two vouchers given to Ars Technica; my mix of experiments and final choices can be seen in the above Web-interface gallery. One design was pretty much a gimme: an Ars Technica theme, made up mostly of white, black, and orange with a smidge of green. Ars uses green sparingly, so I decided to try the "military green" option for the joysticks. Since the default Xbox controller is black, I made this controller match the site's "black-on-white" theme, which I'm sure will anger more than a few readers who prefer the other color scheme's readability.

The second design, on the other hand, was tougher. For a while, I threatened to order what I called the "clown fart" controller, which would have combined every color option possible in as clashy and garish a fashion as I could imagine. I sent the above mock-up to a few Ars staffers, and they each said, in no uncertain terms, they would be very upset if I ordered a clown fart. "Just make something that actually looks good," I was told. Buncha spoilsports.

Ultimately I designed and ordered a more tasteful design. "Oxide red" is one of the only color choices that looks bold and can be placed on the joysticks, so I mixed that with white and "storm gray."

From concept to couch

Sam Machkovech











The latter pad came out pretty much exactly as I'd hoped. This pad only has two dominant colors, and the Web interface sold them quite well. At least in this pad's case, the images I created show off exactly how the colors pop against each other. White as an accent color works well with this color scheme, and it made me feel better about selecting white for the ABXY and menu button arrays.

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech









Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech



Sam Machkovech

The ArsPad, on the other hand, left me a little disappointed. Anybody who has hungered for a mostly white Xbox pad with a few color accents will be satisfied with the options available, but they should be warned that this is not a beaming, bleached, bright-white option. The white plastic used on this pad comes off looking a little dull, especially if your gaming room of choice is bathed in yellow lamp lights (this pad reflects such a situation).

I also made incorrect guesses about the back plastic's visual impact. The version I created online included glam-shot photos of the controller's back, which made the white-on-black-on-orange color scheme look obvious. However, there's something about black on the controller's back and bottom that gets lost whether held in my hands or placed on a surface. I wish the Xbox Design Lab allowed designers to place their creations in other scenes as opposed to the all-white background; it'd help to see how the color combinations might look in a real room or in your hands. Ultimately, white or a bold color makes more sense for something noticeable in the controller's back-plate zone, unless, of course, you're going for the nocturnal black-on-black-on-black-plus-black color scheme.

The other issue with the ArsPad is the "military green" joysticks, which just don't look good juxtaposed with the white plastic. The color is sickly, as if these were black- or gray-plastic joysticks whose color faded over time. Tread carefully with that color choice. It might look cool with a grade or a camouflage color mix, but as a dominant plastic color, it can look tacky.

Were I to redesign the ArsPad again after seeing this one in real life, I would have gone for a dominant orange theme with a green d-pad, lots of white on the back, and lots of black buttons. For many of the color combinations, there's only so much you can discern with either a Web interface or a preview photo, though I do wish Microsoft had made a few recommended templates available.

Also, be warned about the $10 engraving option. Microsoft is opting to use the same gray typeface for your custom text no matter what color it's printing on. Even on the white pad, it looks a little faded and weak, but on the "storm gray" pad, it blends in and can be easily missed, especially if the shiny plastic reflects even the tiniest bit of light. Unless you're desperate to have some words pre-printed on your controller, we recommend you save the $10. The default price of $80 is already a lot to spend on a gamepad, after all.

Listing image by Sam Machkovech