This controller turns your Android phone into a portable Xbox
It seems unlikely that Microsoft will ever make a portable Xbox. Between Sony’s failure with the Vita, Nintendo’s dominance of the market with the Switch, and Microsoft’s device-agnostic business model, there isn’t really much need for such a product.
That doesn’t mean there’s no demand for portable Xbox games, though. Microsoft has been pushing cloud gaming hard with Xbox Game Pass, as well as the ability to stream games directly from your own Xbox console to your phone. And even though a surprising number of players are doing this with touchscreen controls — I know people who swear by the touch version of Hades, believe it or not — it’s not an ideal setup for most Xbox games.
That’s why I was interested to try the RIG MG-X, a mobile controller from Nacon. It’s an officially licensed Xbox controller that works with just about any Android phone, giving it all the buttons you’d find on a standard Xbox One pad. This should make it a good fit for Game Pass games on the go.
Mobile controllers aren’t a new idea, and there are solid options for Android out there already like the Razer Kishi — including a recently released Xbox-specific version. The RIG MG-X, though, has an appealingly straightforward design for a product category that can be a little awkward, which makes for a sleeker approach when coupled with the Xbox buttons. It’s nice not to have to think about which icons map to which commands; you can just naturally use the same buttons you’d have on a conventional Xbox setup.
The controller has a gap in the middle that extends out to clamp around your phone, which connects over Bluetooth. Nacon says it should work with any phone running Android 6 and above with a screen up to 6.7 inches; I mostly used it with a Vivo X70
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