About the 8bitdo Nes30 Pro Controller

Last week, an interesting new controller was announced: the Nes30 Pro controller from 8bitdo. Superficially, it seems like a well built, pocketable controller in the same vein as the Stratus, but with better analog buttons.

Of particular interest was the promised multi-platform support. Basically, with a flip of a switch, you can change the controller from Android, iOS, Windows, etc.

This feature sounds handy. So handy, in fact, that every other MFi controller manufacturer I’ve talked to about it would have implemented it themselves if it wasn’t expressly disallowed by Apple’s MFi licensing agreements.

So that brought me to the obvious conclusion that this isn’t an MFi controller, but is instead an android controller with some bolted-on icade support, much like a multitude of cheap Ipega controllers you can find on Amazon.

I was surprised when TouchArcade ran an article claiming this was an MFi controller. Let me set the record straight right now:

This is NOT an MFi controller. This doesn’t work with any of the almost 700 games with MFi controller support. This only works with a far, far more limited number of iOS games with support for something called icade, which is effectively a hackey controller solution that works by having the controllers emulate keyboard presses.

The folks at 8bitdo confirmed that this isn’t an MFi controller themselves, on Twitter.

I wish it was. It seems like a really nice portable controller – sort of like a Stratus, but done right. But if the TouchArcade article got your hopes up, you’re going to have to keep looking.