The mobile controller company Backbone unveiled its Backbone Pro controller this week, which brings iOS and Android gaming experiences to the next level.
A successor to the Backbone One controller, the Pro features full-size joysticks, re-mappable buttons, and Bluetooth compatibility, making for a more premium gaming setup. Unlike its predecessor, the Backbone Pro doesn’t need to be attached to a phone to work, meaning that you could use it as a wireless controller. That functionality gets extra useful when using cloud gaming services like Xbox Game Pass. You can play a game with the Backbone Pro controller on your TV, then plug your phone into the controller and instantly pick up where you left off on mobile.
“Our thought is, gaming should be a lot more straightforward,” founder Maneet Khaira told TechCrunch. ”It needs to be really simple and work more like AirPods when you connect to screens.”
Backbone is betting big on the growth of mobile gaming, which has only been accelerated by expanding cloud gaming options, but so far, Backbone seems to be cementing itself as the top hardware maker for mobile gamers. It also helps that Backbone is teeming with celebrity investors like Ashton Kutcher, The Weeknd, MrBeast, Post Malone, and Amy Schumer, as well as gaming insiders like Discord founder Jason Citron.
But as someone who doesn’t use Xbox Game Pass or similar cloud subscriptions, I never quite understood the hype around using a smartphone as a gaming device. I already have a Nintendo Switch, a device specifically made for gaming, as opposed to my iPhone, which is designed for a bazillion other things. So to test the Backbone Pro, I downloaded some games on my phone that I already play on the Switch, solely for the purpose of comparing the gameplay experience.
The verdict? I have logged about 13 hours of gameplay on the iOS version of Stardew Valley over the last three days. I’m not fully sold on mobile gaming — answering texts while playing a game is kind of annoying — but I have to say, I’d much rather sit on the couch with the Backbone Pro than the Nintendo Switch, which prioritizes screen size over comfort.
The Backbone Pro shines in its ergonomics. Sometimes, when you pick up a new iPhone, it feels familiar, yet slightly off, and it takes some time to get used to the feel of the new device before the differences stop being noticeable. This was the experience I had playing the Nintendo Switch 2, as opposed to the original console.
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But the Backbone Pro’s design feels so naturally intuitive that I didn’t even experience those few minutes of discomfort. Seconds after plugging my phone into the controller’s USB-C port for the first time, I could play Hades — a game rife with chaotic button mashing — just as easily as I do on the Switch. I find the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller uncomfortable for games like Hades, so that’s saying something.
“Meta, when they were designing the Quest, they would do multiple iterations of a headset [prototype] in a week, because they could print them and then rapidly test them, get feedback, and iterate,” Khaira said. He took inspiration from that technique when developing the Backbone Pro, investing heavily in the same kind of technology.
Backbone 3D-printed over 9,000 different parts before landing on the model that ultimately shipped, making microscopic tweaks to every facet of the controller before arriving at something that makes Joy-Cons feel like Fisher-Price toys.
This level of precision and versatility comes at a cost. The Backbone Pro retails for $169.99, which is a bit steep considering that you could buy a refurbished Nintendo Switch Lite for the same price. But for serious players who need that cross-device functionality, the Backbone Pro could be worth it.
If you’re not moving back and forth between Xbox Game Pass on your TV and your phone, you could probably be fine with the original Backbone One, which is $99.99.
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The tech industry seems to have two thoughts when it comes to where human workers fit into the AI-powered world they are creating: Either they think that all the jobs, except perhaps their own, will be done by bots. (VC Marc Andreessen seems to think that his work as an investor could never be automated).
Or they think that bots will do the icky, boring work, acting as human companions in jobs while humans do brand-new jobs that the bot revolution creates. The latter is the one most supported by historical evidence. The World Economic Forum predicts that 92 million roles will be displaced by current technological trends, but that 170 million new jobs will be created.
For those who don’t have the economic power, or the intellectual interest, to get a master’s degree in AI and machine learning — especially the people who now occupy unskilled labor roles like warehouse workers — what does the bot-filled future look like for them?
Amazon offered a hint of one sort of path on Wednesday when it announced major progress toward replacing warehouse workers with robots with its new Vulcan robot that can “feel.”
“Vulcan is helping make work safer by handling ergonomically challenging tasks, while creating opportunities for our teammates to grow their skills in robotics maintenance,” CEO Andy Jassy posted on X.
In one breath, Amazon’s blog post about Vulcan described how the robot will work alongside humans, gathering items from the warehouse’s highest and lowest shelves, so humans won’t have to climb ladders or bend down all day long. Humans will then gather items stored only in the middle and/or items that the new “feeling” robot still somehow can’t manage to pick up.
In the next breath, Amazon talks about how it is training a small number of warehouse workers to become robot technicians, as it uses the bot for more of the warehouse picking role.
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“These robots — which play a role in completing 75% of customer orders — have created hundreds of new categories of jobs at Amazon, from robotic floor monitors to onsite reliability maintenance engineers,” the blog post said, adding that it offers a job retraining program for some workers to gain these robotic maintenance skills.
Although Amazon didn’t say so, this would obviously not be a 1:1 conversion. It wouldn’t require an army of humans to oversee the robots in the same way it needs them to fulfill warehouse orders directly. Nor would everyone have the aptitude or desire to become robot mechanics.
But the fact that Amazon included info on its retraining program alongside its Vulcan announcement is meaningful.
That’s because there’s been very little evidence so far of what the post robots-doing-all-the-jobs looks like for working-class humans. (One AI startup founder even suggested to TechCrunch that in an AI-does-all-jobs world, the humans would somehow just live on government-issued welfare.)
But perhaps, instead of grocery clerks, there would be “automation monitors,” much like we have one clerk overseeing every row of self-check today. Instead of fast-food cooks, workers would oversee the cook bots, and so on. Running robots becomes like operating a PC: Pretty much everyone needs to know how to do it to be employable.
Then again, this fully bot future may never really materialize. Bots could remain the purview of only the biggest and most deep-pocketed companies — like with Amazon or how they’re used in things like automotive manufacturing — while the vast majority of retail, restaurants, and driving jobs continue to be done by humans. At least for decades more.
Remember, Amazon is a company that was trying to sell its just-walk-out automation Amazon Go technology to a wider retail/grocery industry. The retail industry is none too fond of its biggest competitor, Amazon, and wasn’t terribly interested. The tech was later found to be using humans in India to watch and label videos, and even Amazon later scaled back on its use. Such tech (by Amazon or others) is hardly visible in the wild today.
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