is an editor covering deals and gaming hardware. He joined in 2018, and after a two-year stint at Polygon, he rejoined The Verge in May 2025.
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Gaming accessory company Abxylute has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its upcoming N6 and GameCube-style N9C Switch 2 dock-style controllers. If the ergonomics of Nintendo’s Joy-Cons don’t jibe with you, these aim to be solid alternatives, particularly for people with medium-to-large-size hands.
Both of Abxylute’s new controllers have bigger, more comfortable grips than Joy-Cons offer, along with longer-lasting Hall effect joysticks. I tested a functioning prototype of the N6, and it has almost everything that people might be looking for to level up their gaming experience: full-size sticks, vibration, motion controls, customizable back paddles, and turbo mode for spamming commands.
What the N6 is going for isn’t anything new. CRKD popularized the slide-in form factor with the original Switch. It adds thick grips to your console to make it look and feel more like a Steam Deck. For as much as it added to ergonomics, it stood out as a solution for the Switch’s Joy-Con drift drama by offering Hall effect sticks that won’t degrade. The N6 doesn’t mess with that formula very much. It has full-size Hall effect joysticks that are grippier and feature a concave top so your thumb can rest instead of sliding off. It has thick grips that go around the console’s back to let your fingers spread out, and its triggers are bigger and offer more tactile feedback.
Adding more grip to the back of the console doesn’t mean I don’t want more surface area on the front. Also, the edges of the Switch 2 that stick out from the controller look silly.
The thing is, the N6 doesn’t feel like as much of an upgrade over Joy-Cons as the Nitro Deck, based on my time with a functional prototype. For one, the left and right sticks are too low for my medium-size hands to comfortably reach with my fingers fully extended around its grips, making the D-pad and any of the system-level buttons below them especially tricky to access in a pinch. People with larger hands would likely have more trouble.
You might not experience issues if you have small hands, and/or if you primarily play games that don’t require fast reaction times. The N6 can handle fast reactions, but I never felt confident enough in my grip to execute twitchy commands with precision.
The ergonomics could be improved if Abxylute made the left and right sides of the controller taller and spread out the sticks and buttons more. That would make it easier for more people to fully grip the N6 without struggling to reach the sticks or buttons. As it is, I have to hold it in a precarious claw grip to play some games. Taller controls would also cover the top left and top right edges of the Switch 2, which are inexplicably exposed by the N6’s design.
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