Drone is a new controller on the market by Evolution Controllers. Drone aims to be that one controller that connects with a multitude of devices instead of getting a controller separately for different devices with different support in order to connect and using them. Not only that, Drone offers you a full button layout, so that you can connect and play even with the PC games just like a normal full button layout controller.
Kickstarter for Drone was started on October 23 with a pledge of $30,000 and was to stretch on for a period of 30 days before finally closing on November 23. It has since then reached its goal in just a short time of 7 days and now stands at $30,148. We also covered about what Drone actually is and how it can be beneficial to the consumers with its portable form factor and ease of connection to devices using Bluetooth protocol.
We recently got a chance to interview the Founder and Software Engineer for Drone, Matthew Hefferon, about his project and what inspired him to pursue a project such as Drone.
GearNuke: What inspired you so greatly that led you to the concept and development of Drone?
Matthew Hefferon: I wanted to play games on my phone. I hated on screen touch buttons in game play and wanted a tactile feel. It was really that simple concept that led to the development of the Drone. Then just brainstorming other features and trying to make it the coolest product we can.
GearNuke: We can see that the Xbox controller played an important part in the inspiration of the layout and a bit of the design. But there are people who prefer a symmetrical layout for the sticks. Any chances for that to happen?
Matthew Hefferon: Not on this design. We actually went to our community during the design phases and they voted on the current layout. It has been great having the support from our community and having them help build this product.
GearNuke: We can see the dimensions of the controller [66mmx120mmx25mm] but not how much it weighs?
Matthew Hefferon: It weighs 2.8oz [approx. 79 grams]
GearNuke: How many team members are there who worked or are currently working on Drone?
Matthew Hefferon: We have 3 full time team members working on the Drone and 3 additional part timers.
GearNuke: You sent out 100 beta units, We’re sure the feedback must be positive but did you get any feedback regarding the size of the controller and that it was too small for big hands?And how are the ergonomics on the drone?
Matthew Hefferon: That is usually the first comment we get. People think due to the smaller form factor that it will be uncomfortable but during the design phase we spent a lot of time with the ergonomics of this device. It was definitely a design challenge to make a compact controller and still have it be comfortable to hold and play. We have had positive feedback from people with both small and large hands. I think the best example was [at] PAX this year and many guys said [they] have big hands but this is surprisingly very comfortable.
GearNuke: We see that the controller supports custom configuration files. Is there any profile saving system on the Drone that saves different mapped buttons for different devices?
Matthew Hefferon: Soon. Currently we have 6 open configs you can bootup into. You can manually write code to those custom configurations but we are in works of developing a mapping tool. This will hopefully be our first stretch goal once we get funded.
We thank Matthew Hefferon for sparing his precious time to answer our questions for this interview. We hope and wish the best of luck to the team at Evolution Controllers for their project to succeed and reach new heights.
What did you think about this interview and about the enthusiastic team pursuing their goal in order to make the lives of gamers easier? Let us know in the comments section below.
Stay tuned with us at GearNuke for more information about Drone by Evolution Controllers.
