Earlier this year, Microsoft relaunched its Xbox Design Lab to help gamers customize their controllers with a wide mix of colors, and now Microsoft is bringing back even more customizations from last-gen including rubberized grips and metallic paint options.
In a recent blog, despite already offering millions of existing design combos, Microsoft announced that it’s expanding customization options to include optional black rubberized grips to help ensure your controller doesn’t slip out of your hands in the heat of action, along with 19 new metallic finishes for your controller’s D-Pads and Triggers.
The new range of metallic paint finishes includes: Sterling Silver, Pewter Silver, Gunmetal Silver, Abyss Black, Retro Pink, Deep Pink, Oxide Red, Zest Orange, Gold, Electric Volt, Velocity Green, Glacier Blue, Dragonfly Blue, Mineral Blue, Photon Blue, Midnight Blue, Regal Purple, Nocturnal Green, and Warm Gold.
On top of that, Microsoft has also added three new color choices when designing your Xbox controller’s exterior, including Dragonfly Blue, Military Green, and Electric Green, with the latter two getting slight tweaks to their color profile to make them richer and more accurate.
Alternatively, if you don’t feel like customizing every element on your controller and would prefer to just buy a controller sporting a theme based on your favorite game, Microsoft’s new “Inspired By” line of controllers will feature designs from titles such as Skyrim, Forza Horizon 5, Battlefield 2042, and Riders Republic.
The one small downside to designing your custom Xbox controller though is that controllers from the Xbox Design Lab start at $70 ($10 more than a standard Xbox controller), with some options like the new rubberized grips ($6.99) requiring some additional premiums. And because each custom controller is made to order, you’re looking at a lead time of around three to four weeks before it actually arrives.
But for people who want to show off their design skills with a truly unique controller, the Xbox Design Lab now has even more customizations than before. Meanwhile, PS5 owners are still limited to a much smaller range of official color combos for Sony’s Dual Sense controller.