Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Series 3 Controller Gets Revealed in New Leak

The successor to Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller has reportedly leaked, and it looks quite different from the previous model. Anatel, Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency, has posted several pictures of the new Elite controller, which have been shared by Brazilian website Tecnoblog (via The Verge). The same website also posted pictures of a new cloud-connected controller coming from the same source.

Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller was released in 2019, but it’s been notoriously fragile and unreliable. The new Elite controller still features a wrap-around rubberized grip, but the D-pad has been redesigned, and there are also two new scroll wheels at the bottom, right around the headphone jack.

This time, Microsoft also opted for a removable battery, which will have a smaller capacity (1,528mAh) than the built-in battery in the Elite Series 2 controller (2,050mAh). The latter offers up to 40 hours of battery life.

One of the leaked pictures also reveals that the Elite 3 controller will support direct connectivity to Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming servers. The Pair button will allow gamers to switch between local mode and cloud mode, and the latter should offer better latency when playing cloud-enabled Xbox games.

Microsoft may well use its Xbox Games Showcase on June 7 to announce this new Elite controller alongside the smaller, cloud-connected version that also leaked yesterday. Xbox gamers have been waiting for years for a new Elite controller, and it’s also time for Microsoft to bring cloud connectivity to its controllers after Google and Amazon both did so years ago.