Controller vibrations stop working with low battery

Miscellaneous Xbox & Games Industry
1

This is mainly to share my experience and educate everyone else out there.

Just this morning, my controller would stop vibrating at the start of each race. I was in Career, so I would pause the race, turn off the controller, turn it back on, and the vibrations would work until the end of the race. At the start of the next race, I would have to repeat the steps.

After three races, I started to troubleshoot more and noticed my controller battery was in the red on the home screen. Once I replaced my batteries, the vibrations worked just fine with no issues.

Based on what I remember, this didn’t happen previously, and I think it is linked to the newly-added battery indicator.

Lesson: If your controller vibrations stop working, it’s time to change the batteries.

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2

It was this way before. Used it as a battery indicator, pre-indicator :slight_smile:

3

Guess I just never noticed it. I’ve only had the Xbox for about a month, and only the second time I changed the batteries.

Thanks!

4

True statement. Subsequently, controller stops working with dead batteries. Fair warning.

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5

of course.
Its still useful, as it lets you know on the fly, helpful during multiplayer!

6

This is true, the only issue I’ve had with using the vibration as an indicator is it doesn’t give you much time… I’ve started a race with vibration 1 lap in it stopped, being an online race I wasn’t able to pause and switch batteries, sure enough on the final laps controller dies. Had maybe 5 mins of race time before controller died. While the battery on the home screen is nice I did like the flashing indicator from the 360 better.

7

I agree. A little more advance notification would be nice.

I never remember the 360’s vibration stopping before the whole controller died.

8

Oh wow, I’ve only been gotten once. If your trying to squeeze it out and the headsets plugged in, try to pull it out. I’ve noticed it hits the battery decently.

9

I’ve complained of the lack of battery indication from the UI before. I read that we were supposed to be getting a firmware update that adds a battery indicator. Why we didn’t already have one in November is beyond me.

10

Dashboard indicator is a load of pants. What use is it? Do you really dash after every few races to see what your battery level is? No. Bring back the flashing lights of the 360 controller.

Also, I have the play and charge kit - it’s great apart from one annoying thing - when you plug it in the controller turns off and on again so when you are in Forza, you have to press A to acknowledge the controller again.

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11

Yeah I’ve only had that happen once it usually just dies when I’m tuning or messing around in the menus. Unplugging should give you just enough time to hopefully finish

Almost went with the play and charge but decided to get rechargeable batteries. My hope was for more life out of a charge, no idea which lasts longer, but I’m surprised it’s not seamless with the plug and play. Bring back cords?

12

I Thought my controller was broken when this happened, just turned out I needed to change the batteries.

1 Like
13

Yeah just noticed that yesterday at first I thought it was something wrong with the game but then a couple hours later the batteries went totally dead.

14

I noticed this quite a while ago. I’m glad that the batteries aren’t wasted with the Xbox One. With really heavy use I can get about 5-8 days out of the batteries on the One but the 360 ate through batteries, I’d be lucky to get 2 days with heavy use on the 360.

I like the fact that they use a cable that almost everyone has and (micro USB) and not something like the connector (I assume it’s a proprietary connector) that was on the wireless 360 controllers