Samsung announced their very own Android gamepad late last year, now Apple’s iOS will be getting some similar treatment from peripheral maker Steelseries in the form of the Stratus wireless gaming controller.
Steelseries, a company known more for its range of PC gaming gear, announced the Stratus controller for iOS 7 devices, saying that it will introduce mobile gamers to an “…entirely new world of console-style mobile gaming,” The Stratus controller certainly conforms to what gamers on the major consoles have come to expect from their input devices, seemingly taking a page from Nintendo’s design book for its appearance.
The Stratus will connect to iPhone 5 or later smartphones, the newer range of iPads (4th gen and up) and fifth generation iPods – provided they are running iOS 7. The gamepad has a claimed battery life of 10 hours and recharges via USB and Bluetooth 2.1 is the connection standard for the device. There’s no release date available for the Stratus overseas yet but it will retail for $100 at launch (a little under R1,100).
Both the Android and iOS controllers, taken with recent news from Nvidia regarding the launch of the Tegra K1 processor, bode extremely well for mobile gaming as a platform – at least in the eyes of the more hardcore gamer.
Source: Steelseries via The Verge