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Microsoft may not have had much to say about gaming yesterday, but with an interface like this in the works, video games clearly remain a basic pillar of the Xbox brand. Amidst exhaustive talk of instant-on television and fantasy football, the Xbox One controller offered reassuring familiarity. While some view the presence of both Kinect and a traditional controller in the same package as a symptom of Xbox One's uncertain focus - is it for hardcore gamers? Casual players? Both? Neither? - for dedicated fans the new pad offered one of the few concessions Microsoft seemed willing to make toward its core audience.
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While the company only briefly touched on the new system's controller in its hour-long console unveiling yesterday, the latest iteration of the Xbox gamepad dominated its behind-the-scenes follow-up demonstrations for assembled members of the press. Even though Microsoft's mantra for its Kinect motion-tracking peripheral has always been, "You are the controller," and even though Kinect is a mandatory feature of the newly revealed Xbox One, the old-fashioned buttons-and-thumbsticks gamepad won't be falling by the wayside in the coming generation.
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