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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

Nice that they’re doing what they can to not leave people with e-waste bricks, but why would these be locked down in the first place?

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They weren't "locked down" really, they just weren't bluetooth controllers; they connected over wifi directly to Stadia. This isn't removing shackles, it's adding new functionality.

But they clearly have Bluetooth hardware in them, which was the commenter's point, I believe.

So does your phone and somehow still doesn't behave as a controller when paired with a PC. Someone needs to write that.

The bluetooth was used for initial pairing with a phone or Chromecast.

And it couldn't be used for anything else because it was locked down.

They could always be used as standard USB game controllers. They just couldn't be used as Bluetooth game controllers.

Saying it was locked down implies the functionality was present but disabled. Use as a bluetooth controller was not implemented. Now it is.

It’s worth noting that if you plugged them in via USB they always worked.

It’s the wifi (not BT) connection that never worked off-platform.

They did not have firmware which could handle acting as a Bluetooth controller. That's what the new binary you can flash has.

Okay, I think i grok that. not so much locked down as they never built the capability. Although they did use BT for initial pairing with some devices so a certain amount of functionality was there.

From that starting point, allowing it to be a normals BT controller should require a minimum of additional work, but I think they probably had a reasonable business case to not do that:

We know they tried to implement to minimize additional latency, so I’m guessing they really did not want people using these as a general BT controller in case the user inadvertently connected to Stadia in that mode, which would have increased latency and reduced user experience.

Being able to plug in via usb for general controller usage was fine because increased latency there was not going to be an issues.

I suppose it all makes sense.

They basically gave them away for free to get people to try Stadia.

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