One ad is a statement. Two ads – each during two of the most important moments for marketing – seems like commitment.

And so when Xbox showed off its Adaptive Controller during both its Christmas and Super Bowl ad spots, it suggested they represented something important for the company. The special controller – much larger than the one traditionally sold with the console, and featuring a whole range of buttons built for people who might not usually be able to use them – was not just another accessory but one that represented a deeper aim for the company.

That plan was to allow anyone to play on the Xbox, no matter the disabilities or other challenges that might have kept them from consoles in the past. And the controller represented a major part of that project – first introduced last summer, it has continued to feature in Xbox's advertising and strategy, as well as offering a glimpse at its future plans.

The project of the Xbox Adaptive Controller was conceived during a hackathon where engineers could think about and work on side projects. But it quickly became clear this was not just a experiment or a trial.

"I knew it was going to be a big deal. But it's become much more of a phenomenon than even we realised," says Chris Kujawski, a principal designer at Microsoft who worked on the project.

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From there, the work grew quickly. Microsoft worked with a range of charities to ensure that the new controller served their needs, and that they were involved with the project.

"We came to understand this saying: nothing about us, without us," he says. If engineers plan on designing products for a particular need, then they need to do so with the people who have that need; as well as ensuring it practically solves the functions, it ensures that people feel involved in the process.

"Our goal is never to replace any of those charities, but instead to provide another tool that they can use," Kujawski says.

Microsoft and Xbox are far from the only companies to have given promotion to their accessibility efforts in recent years. Apple, for instance, has worked hard to show the variety of different tools its products have to allow people to use them in whatever way is best.

But the hardware that Xbox developed has helped to make the case even more concretely, giving developers and advocates something to point to while judging how far technology companies have come.

"With a piece of hardware, a physical object, it's much easier to wrap your head around," he says. "You can point to this object that is the representation of it.

"Having this actual object to point to as a starting point" has helped bring yet more recognition, he says, and helped spur yet more developments in both hardware and software – as well as the conversations that surround them.

The difficulties in creating such a piece of hardware also helped to serve as a statement of intent. Plenty of games and consoles have introduced software options that have helped improve accessibility, but producing a hardware tool is noticeable in part because it is harder.

"It's more expensive and more difficult and it takes a lot longer time," he says. The fact that Microsoft is so big, with so many resources as well as a history of working on hardware, allowed the Xbox engineers to draw on the kind of support they needed.

"Those are resources not everyone has," says Kujawski. "It works to our benefit and it made for a really great product."

As work continued, the sheer amount of research and numbers of stakeholders meant that the engineers sometimes had more ideas than they could possibly make. Many ideas and suggestions had to be put aside: there's no capacitive sensor in the buttons, for instance, so despite appearing somewhat like one they won't work as a touchpad.

Such suggestions would be possible – but the more that is added, the higher the price climbs, he says. "We tried to be very conscious about making this affordable."

The existing tech is often expensive because it is made by companies who produce them in relatively limited runs. By aiming to be inclusive of particular needs, the equipment can become exclusive because it is so expensive, which is something that the Xbox team specifically avoided by creating a controller that had cost under $100.

Xbox, like just about every other tech company, won't say specifically what's coming next. But the principles that guide that future work in accessibility will be the same: watching for where people's needs are being met, and more importantly watching for places they aren't.