Controller Weekly News Digest #5: Leverless Showdown, GameSir’s Hidden Screen, and a Dash of $1,000 Console Drama
GadgetHyper Team
June 29, 2026 · Industry News & Hardware Drops
Hey Reddit! Ray here from GadgetHyper. We’re back with our fifth weekly recap of everything shifting, shaking, and dropping in the controller and gaming peripheral landscape.
Credit where credit is due: This week’s digest is adapted with permission from the excellent weekly video report by Bilibili hardware creator 椒盐橘子桔子 (Salt & Pepper Orange). Let’s dive straight into the hardware.
The Fighting Game Community Takeover
The leverless/Hitbox market is absolutely on fire right now, and this week brought two massive updates for fighting game fans.
8BitDo Arcade Controller Pro
Red Ferrum 8K Hitbox
GameSir’s Big Teases: Screens & Pixels
GameSir has been incredibly active on domestic social channels lately, giving us a sneak peek at two very distinct aesthetics.
GameSir "Stargazer" (观星者)
GameSir Super Nova (You Yan She Edition)
EasySMX 8K, Beitong, and 8BitDo Colorways
EasySMX D15 (8K Edition)
EasySMX is prepping a very aggressive, bold aesthetic split-controller design. It’s slated for an early July launch. Compact Inline Pricing: International pre-orders are sitting around $132 USD.
Beitong KP70 (Neverness to Everness Edition)
Beitong pulled back the curtain on their official Neverness to Everness (NTE) anime open-world collab pad. Based on the KP70 architecture, rumor has it they’ve tweaked the triggers, adjusted the joystick tension/damping rings, and modified the back buttons specifically for this edition. It features native plug-and-play profile mapping when the game drops.
8BitDo Anniversary Drops
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the N64, 8BitDo is dropping a gorgeous "Clear Blue" translucent colorway for both the Ultimate 2 controller and their Retro Mechanical Keyboard. It’s pure nostalgia bait, though the internal tech remains identical to the standard models.
Hardware Drama of the Week: The $1,000 "Steam Console"
The rumor mill spent the last week heavily debating a leaked, custom pre-built "Steam Console" PC targeted at a staggering price point. Compact Inline Pricing: The targeted retail cost sits at $1,000 USD.
While the tech community loves a dedicated living-room PC, the leaked specs have raised a lot of eyebrows for that price point: a custom AMD APU, 16GB system RAM, 8GB VRAM, and a 512GB SSD. Performance estimates floating around put it at less than half the raw power of a modest desktop RTX 4060 build—and it apparently doesn't even bundle a controller in the box. Suffice it to say, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo probably aren't losing any sleep over this specific threat just yet.
Join the Conversation
Useful Hardware Tool or Battery-Draining Gimmick?
The trend of slapping full-color screen displays on gaming controllers is officially in overdrive with GameSir jumping into the ring. What's your take on controller screens? Are they a genuinely useful tool for on-the-fly macro/profile tweaking without opening PC software, or are they just a battery-draining gimmick that adds unnecessary cost? Drop your take in the comments below, and we'll see you next week!
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