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Photos of Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming controller have leaked online, with Brazilian website Tecnolog publishing images of the controller undergoing testing at Brazil's Anatel national telecommunications body.
The cloud gaming controller pictured is made by Microsoft itself, according to Tom Warren at The Verge, and resembles a shrunken Xbox Series X/S controller with a rectangular body, short grips, staggered thumb sticks and the full complement of standard Xbox controls, including a d-pad, face buttons, bumpers, triggers, start, select, share, pairing and the Xbox button. Two colours are available, white and black.
The controller uses Wi-Fi to connect directly to Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming service for lower latency than a multi-stage Bluetooth or 2.4GHz wireless link would provide. However, you can use the controller with other devices via Bluetooth 5.3 and 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi 6. The battery is 500mAh, a standard size for this kind of controller, but a departure from Microsoft's usual preference for AA batteries. The controller is powered by a dual-core ARM Cortex A7 in a Realtek chipset.
Thus far, the controller remains unannounced and we don't have any information on pricing or availability, though perhaps the inadvertent worldwide reveal will spur Microsoft to move up their announcement plans.
We last looked at Microsoft's cloud gaming service in detail in 2024, so it will be interesting to see if the new controller is accompanied by improvements to image quality, latency and other elements that didn't hugely impress us the last time around.