GuliKit’s Steam Deck dock looks like a Super Nintendo

theverge.com:

By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

GuliKit, the company whose patented Hall effect joysticks are sweeping the industry with both aftermarket gamepads and drop-in replacements for your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck, is now putting Nintendo and Microsoft on notice in a very different way.

I don’t know how else to say this: the company’s new docking station looks like a Super Nintendo, and its new controller looks like an Xbox Elite. Thankfully, that means they both look great!

As you can see, the SNES-like console shell slides open to reveal an alcove for your PC gaming handheld of choice — or even a Nintendo Switch itself, though it’s not clear how you’d access its bottom-mounted USB-C port. Perhaps the dock just has a Switch compatibility mode, not a Switch mount.

I also think not putting USB ports on the front of the Super Nintendo dock, where the controllers would plug in, is a slight missed opportunity.

Meanwhile, the new GuliKit KK3 Max gamepad not only apes Microsoft’s rear paddles but also includes the bean-shaped ones Sony includes with its DualSense Edge — plus triggers that can swap between digital and analog modes and RGB lighting around the analog sticks (more easily visible here). It includes a “patented new magnetic motor,” presumably for haptics, that sounds like a hybrid between an LRA and the traditional rotary motors that produce basic rumble by spinning an eccentric mass.

GuliKit also writes that it’s got new Hall effect sensors inside with 2,200-level sampling, up from 256. I will admit to not knowing how much of a practical difference that makes. I do know that