CRKD announces another limtied NEO S controller and the gaming world gets a little worse

If you haven’t heard of CRKD, they are a company that makes controllers. Specifically, ones that harken back to the old square NES style. Their main marketing strategy is to pump these little boxy boys out at high volume and market them as collectables. But seriously, don’t we have enough issues with collectables in gaming?

I am a lover of RPGs, so I get hit with the collectable curse every time I dip into my library. FFXIV has an ever-growing list of mounts and emotes, whilst Assassin’s Creed sends you to the far corners of the earth for a bird's feather. Even the Nonogram app on my phone has a daily puzzle you need to jump through hoops to unlock.

That sums up the biggest problem: “daily." It is a practice that preys on FOMO. If you don’t act fast enough, you might miss that limited-time thing, so you have to pay to ensure you get it, or play more and sit through those ads. That is a whole different conversation in itself, ads. The point is, we already have this overabundance of collectables inside gaming; we don’t need it outside as well, and yet, CRKD.

The offender this time is the NEO S 5-Fret deadmau5 Fortnite Festival Edition, and to be fair, it does look nice. It is a crisp white splattered with blue, with a prominent mau5head on it. Plus, it features five frets for rhythm games, which I imagine are useful in that genre. Being that it is a collaboration, the controller is limited edition, and once it is gone, it's gone. So I hope you are ready to drop another $59.99 on a controller.

To put this in perspective, it is more expensive than an Xbox controller, and every other controller they make is damn near the same price.

Of course, you could simply not buy it, but then you will forever have a hole in your CRKD “True Collection System”. It is bad enough we have limited-time drops, exclusives locked to consoles, and new iPhone models to buy; do we really have to over-monetise controllers too?