Remember back in May when….. of course you don’t. It was May. That was a whole 4 months ago. I’ll refresh the memories. Back in May a company called PowerA announced their gaming peripheral the MOGA Bluetooth controller for Android phones. A controller pad in Nintendo ds style fashion that would hold your phone up top and have the controller on the bottom. Seems like a comfortable setup. They didn’t announce any prcing points or a time for the release of the controller just that it was coming to android gamers everywhere before the holidays. And by everywhere I want to say that I’m using that as a generalization. I don’t know the actual locations of where this controller will be available geographically. But expect that it’s a good bet you will be able to get your hands on one if you want it. Now that it’s almost time for the holidays, PowerA has lived up to their timeframe as they have just stated that it will be available for all us gamers out there starting October 21st for $50 big ones. Not a bad price point.
The cool thing about the PowerA MOGA for those who live under a rock and never heard anything about this at all, (what are games? Huh?) is that it is built in a clamshell design that clamps your phone in place for viewing to make gaming even easier and feel like a handheld gaming device. *see above about Nintendo DS comment* The MOGA not only works with Android smartphones but you can use the controller for tablets as well you just have to forfeit the clamp style as it won’t support anything size wise bigger than a smartphone. Along the two controller styles PowerA has developed a companion application that has a rather handy feature to it. You can use it to track all of the games on your device that have gamepad or controller support and easily launch them for play from a nifty little window. All the supported games in one spot so you can easily play on the go with the MOGA. I’d say that this is a good feature to have if PowerA wants to help promote use of their product. And what better way than to make playing peoples favorite games with a controller easier.
PowerA states that they have partnerships with a wide variety of game developers which is good news that more gamepad support could become available to some of the really good games out there. Some of the developers include Namco Bandai, Gameloft, Atari, Sega and Remedy Entertainment to name just a few but the list certainly doesn’t end there. More partnerships will be in the works and PowerA says that the developers have committed to developing games that are compatible with the MOGA platform. Too awesome. Now if we can just get gamepad support for Final Fantasy 3 all is right with the world. No official geographic locations have been listed as available spots for picking up this beauty as I stated above but we do know that we’ll be able to find it in select gaming retailers. Which probably means Gamestop, Best Buy, and other video game stores of that nature. It’s also worth noting that after release for a short time, you be able to snatch up copies of Sonic CD and Pacman for absolutely NOTHING when you buy a MOGA. Now that’s what I call incentive.