My Favorite Forgotten Xbox Feature
When was the last time you heard the words “Impulse Triggers?” Have you ever even heard them? That word jumble is the name for Microsoft’s secondary “new” Xbox controller vibration technology, which first rolled out back in 2013. If you’ve followed any gaming coverage in more recent years, you’ve probably heard about the Nintendo Switch’s 3D Rumble system, or the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback systems that give Sony’s Dualsense controller its name. But no one talks much about the Impulse Triggers anymore.
I’m here in a desperate and perhaps meaningless bid to change that.
Vibration has been around as a video game feedback mechanism for a long time. Arcade machines in the 80’s and 90’s often came equipped with force feedback steering wheels or vibrating seats. In the late 90’s, the tech exploded into homes thanks to the N64’s Rumble Pak add-on and Sony’s original DualShock controller. Now, games could send vibrations directly to your hands. It became a standard overnight and it never went away — except that one awkward time that Sony didn’t want to pay to license a proprietary vibration system when they were launching the PS3.
Rumble had grown a little stale by the time the Xbox One launched in 2013, so Microsoft decided to kick it up a notch with Impulse…
