Future Controllers May Need to be Charged for Only a Minute

Batteries. We have em’, we need em’, and we’re not gettin’ rid of em’ anytime soon. Still, that doesn’t mean replacing batteries--or recharging them--isn’t a pain in the butt. Heck, that’s one of the reasons the Wii U was such a bummer: a tablet controller is great on paper, but in practice, it means you need to be plugged in all the time (thus, super-close to your TV) and unplugging netted you about an hour of game-time before you give up.

If only we could treat our batteries like we do our burritos--just nuke em’ for a minute and they’re good to go. Well, according to director of product development at PDP, Christopher Dingle, speaking at CES 2016, his company is making some progress in the field of the battery to bring us closer to this burrito-themed utopia--and they hope to use this technology in Xbox One controllers.

How?

"We’ve developed a technology to charge your controller in a new way, it’s not using a battery pack. In the past it has been about either your dry cell battery chemistries or your lithium ion or lithium polymers, but we’ve developed a new type of power pack."

Yawn, right? Well, what’s impressive about this hypothetical battery is that it will last for eight hours… after being charged for a minute. Yes, one minute charge times, for eight hours of controller action. THAT is cool. Unfortunately, this is still very much a work in progress, and outside saying that pre orders would likely begin at the end of 2016 and would likely cost 99 bucks, we know next to nothing. Still--combine this battery with an Xbox Elite controller… that’d be fancy enough to make even PC gamers jealous.

Except that Xbox One controllers are compatible with the PC, so… nevermind, then.