Gaming has a huge impact on the environment. From the plastic used to create the boxes that your discs are packaged in, to shipping them across the world, to the amount of electricity required to power your console, PC, or television, there’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to making the hobby environmentally friendly.
There’s a reason why I always acknowledge the packaging of any hardware I review. I like to point out when a company sends something clad entirely in recyclable packaging, and if there’s excessive plastic or polystyrene, I complain. This is the easiest way to make your products more environmentally friendly, and still companies slip up.
Another area of worry about gaming’s impact on the environment is the single-use nature of many products. Throw out your old console for a new one. Upgrade your keyboard and get rid of the one you’ve used for about six months. There are evenreportsthat, when you send your Joy-Con to Nintendo to fix stick drift, the company doesn’t actually fix the issue and instead sends you a whole new controller.
While these claims are unsubstantiated, my gamepads have been constantly breaking over the past two years. My originalSwitchdeveloped stick drift. I have reason to believe my OLED is starting to do so too, despite the fact it mostly gathers dust betweendisappointing Pokemon adventures. The Hori gamepad I bought for comfortable Switch gamingalsodeveloped serious drifting issues. My Xbox Series X controller broke, specifically the left bumper (L1). The replacement I bought directly from Xbox broke in exactly the same way. Maybe it was too much player switching inEA Sports FC 24, but it’s infuriating. While I could join a waiting list for Nintendo to fix my Joy-Con, I don’t know how long that’ll take, and I don’t want to buy a new controller every year to be able to play games.
Then I tried the Thrustmaster Eswap X2. I always associated Thrustmaster with steering wheels,gearboxes, and flight controls, but it turns out it produces normal shaped game pads, too. Except there’s more to the Eswap X2 than meets the eye.
Firstly, as promised, the packaging. Thrustmaster sends the Eswap X2 in mostly cardboard packaging, with minimal plastic and a nice cloth bag to keep your components, cables, and tools in. Perfect.
As the name suggests, the Eswap is a customisable controller. Both joysticks, the D-pad, and the triggers can be swapped out at will, as well as two cosmetic panels on the sides. The clearest function for this is to swap the left joystick and the D-pad, so you may opt for either the Xbox or PlayStation style layouts at will, but it works in any combination. Yes, you can even put both joysticks on the left half of the controller if you have a really funky grip.
This customisability is really cool, especially when you realise you can buy more colour options to jazz it up, but it immediately made me think about sustainability. What happens if I suffer from joystick drift on the Thrustmaster? I buy a new joystick. The same goes for a sticky trigger or faulty D-pad. It’s still throwing away a broken part, but replacing a small bit of a controller is vastly preferable to throwing the whole thing out, as I’ll inevitably have to do with my first-party Xbox controllers. While the company’s Elite Controller 2 has some replaceable parts, they’re all paddles and thumbsticks. If your joystick starts drifting, a new thumbstick ain’t gonna fix it.
Thrustmaster calls its joystick-switching “Hot-Swap technology”, but it’s a lot more simple than it sounds. For the joysticks, simply pull them out of the handset by gently overpowering the magnets that keep them in place. The D-pad requires the use of the double-ended tool Thrustmaster supplies in the box, which neatly hooks it out. The triggers use the other side of that, a standard crosshead screwdriver. I do have a slight worry that yanking the joysticks too regularly will contribute to the drift that requires the purchase of new modules (£16.99 each, by the way), but only time will tell if that fear proves true.
But all of this is moot if the Eswap X2 isn’t a good controller. I’ve tried a lot of pads in my time, and some are simply better than others. The GameCube controller is a classic. The Switch Pro Controller might be my favourite of all time. I prefer Xbox to PlayStation. The Eswap X2 feels great.
I immediately liked the joysticks and triggers on the Eswap X2. There’s quite a lot of springy resistance on the former, and the option to change the activation distance of the latter with the flick of a switch. Initially, I wasn’t a fan of how the face buttons or D-pad felt, but after a few hours, the mechanical systems won me over. I still prefer the feel of membrane buttons over mechanical ones (I’m the opposite when it comes to keyboards, as a complicated man with complicated opinions), but the sensitivity and responsiveness of the Eswap X2 is undeniable.
The Eswap X2 has everything. It’s got four buttons on the rear, programmable either using Thrustmaster software or using the gamepad itself. I would love a wireless version for casual couch gaming, but at that point I’m wishlisting, and I understand that an esports-ready gamepad will want a low latency connection.
The Thrustmaster Eswap X2 is a great controller. It feels comfortable, handles well, and performs admirably. But more importantly than that, it could be a blueprint for the future of sustainable gaming. No more throwing away controllers that have just one faulty button because they’re a week out of warranty. No more buying a whole new pad just because Microsoft released one in a prettier colour. Maybe the PS6 could just be a new processor and SSD that you slot into the PS5 yourself. The opportunities are endless, and we should get behind a movement that’s not only better for the planet, but our wallets, too.
