Arc Touch Mouse Promotional Photo from Microsoft.com

Microsoft has done dual brand-new controllers — one for your mechanism, one for your XBox 360 — that can switch into dissimilar shapes depending upon your needs or preferences. The well-leaked, much-anticipated Arc Touch Mouse is shipping right away; a new wireless XBox Play and Charge pack will be out stateside in November.

Exactly the month ago, Microsoft Hardware teased their brand-new mouse upon Twitter with a prejudiced image and the riddle/tagline: “Don’t be so touchy… prosaic is where it’s at.” Most people guessed it was the new rodent or trackpad, though as John Paczkowski noted, “the combination image also looks similar to the back of the smartphone or media player…or the remote control…or an electric razor…or the pancake griddle.” What was this brand-new poser device?

Well, it’s the rarely mobile, lightweight, touch-sensitive rodent that arcs to fit in a palm of your palm whilst you’re using it and packs prosaic so you can stuff it in the pocket on the go. It’s targeted for laptop users who don’t like their always-flat trackpads.

In a press release patrician “Think a Mouse is Dead?“, Microsoft Hardware’s Brett Ostrum wrote which even as trackpads and other submit inclination have evolved, a market for mice has usually grown: “The reasons people need external mice will not change: comfort as well as precision.”

There have been some good concessions to a trackpad indication here, though: a Arc Touch has the touch frame instead of the corkscrew circle. Instead of the ideally well-spoken draw towards, a frame vibrates to simulate to simulate the wheel’s click-click bumps. I hope you can toggle this feature upon as well as off — I suppose a little people suffer, or at slightest have gotten in the habit of to, a finger-on-glass feel of the trackpad or touchscreen.

(Here’s the promotional video of the Arc Touch in action. If usually Microsoft could invent the Silverlight video which could flat-pack into HTML 5 for easy embedding!)

The XBox 360 has the brand-new wireless controller, as well, though the flat-packing form tweak is some-more pointed. Its directional desk pad can cocktail up into the “plus” for lifted directional controls, or snap flush into the “disc” for easy Street Fighter II-style thumb-drag joystick moves. (Sorry for the old-fashioned diversion anxiety. I’m old.)

There are copiousness of alternative nice things in this indication, together with wireless (of march as well as the brand-new silver-gray look. But I consider a flexibility of a d-pad is a genuine object of interest here. As you begin regulating remotes for game consoles to do some-more as well as some-more things, either as media players or web browsers, we’re going to want controllers which can morph to compare.