The Xbox Adaptive Controller is emblematic of Microsoft’s belief that, through technological means, every person in the world can be empowered to realize their full potential. With this in mind, the company formed a team of designers focused on developing a controller for people with limited mobility.

In the past, solutions were expensive, hard to find, or required significant technical skills to create. With the Xbox Adaptive Controller, the idea was to have a team of design experts work with actual limited-mobility gamers as well as with organizations around the world, such as The AbleGamers Charity, The Cerebral Palsy Foundation, Craig Hospital, SpecialEffect and Warfighter Engaged. Input from all of these parties helped shape the design and functionality of the Xbox Adaptive Controller.

The result is a sleek-looking, plug-and-play setup that’s extensible and affordable and serves a broad range of gamers. In addition, it works with multiple external devices—such as switches, buttons, mounts, and joysticks—that help create a uniquely individual experience. More importantly, it levels the playing field for all gamers, so that their skills, talents and imagination can shine.

With Xbox, Microsoft strives to provide players everywhere with the opportunity to enjoy the games they want, with the people they want, on the devices they want. Thanks to the incredible talents of this team, and the help it got from players themselves, the Xbox Adaptive Controller provides an elegant solution.

Every 30 seconds, a child in the United States is diagnosed with a serious illness or injury that requires a stay in a hospital or health-care facility. While such facilities are staffed with excellent doctors and nurses, these children have been wrenched from the warmth and safety of homes and placed in sterile environments. They are scared, lonely, and in pain.

In 1982, the Starlight Children’s Foundation was established to ease these patients’ suffering by providing them with entertaining and educational respite. For more than 25 years, the nonprofit has done so, in part, through Starlight Fun Centers, mobile entertainment units that move with ease from ERs to waiting rooms to bedsides. Powered by many generations of Nintendo consoles, the centers offer access to family-friendly video games and other programs. They are often a source of smiles and much-needed normalcy for kids and families facing difficult medical challenges.

Most recently, the nonprofit added to its line-up the Starlight Xperience, a state-of-the-art virtual reality headset preloaded with content geared toward entertaining and educating young hospital patients. Created in collaboration with Star Wars: Force for Change, the charitable initiative from Lucasfilm and the Walt Disney Company, it enables kids to take virtual journeys into remarkable worlds.

As with all of Starlight’s efforts, it also helps patients and their families normalize health-care-facility stays as much as possible while managing pain. Since its founding, Starlight has provided its services to more than 60 million patients and families in more than 800 facilities nationwide.