Earlier this week Xbox Live’s Major Nelson announced the upcoming release of a newly designed Xbox 360 controller that will work with current Xbox 360 consoles and the recently released Xbox 360 Slims.

We’ve just made the Xbox 360 Wireless controller even better with a brand new version that includes a transforming D-pad.  The engineers have come up with an ingenious solution with a d-pad that can go from a plus to a disc with the twist of the wrist.

Here is a video showing the new controller and the pop up D-Pad feature that apparently many gamers have asked for compared to the flat one on the current controllers. As I understand it this will help with fighting games on the console.

@MajorNelson also mentions in the video a couple of details about this new controller:

• Releases on 09 November 2010 and will only be sold bundled with the Play and Charge kit at a retail price of $64.99
• If your going to be at Pax Prime this weekend make sure you track him down because he is going to have a few of these to give away

Two things I am unsure about on this new controller are the mechanism to twist the D-Pad to pop it up – will it be sturdy enough to tolerate the D-Pad usage and not fail.  Secondly, the gray scale colors on the A, B, X, Y buttons.  Many games color code their on screen display for those buttons and that can be very handy for a split second reference as your gaming.  I guess muscle memory for those button locations will have to be the key factor when using this controller.

What do you think of the new controller and design changes it has?

Wireless Controller with Transforming D-Pad and Play and Charge Kit page at Xbox.com

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