A submarine that does routine tours to the underwater wreck of the HMS Titanic has gone missing. Now that would be a tragic news indeed, but to make things worse, this particular vehicle was being controlled via a 2005 Logitech Xbox 360 knock-off gamepad. And that's not even half of it.
Those who embark on the underwater journey spend several thousand dollars to enter this small submarine, only to take a gander at the Titanic wreck. However, the vehicle does not even a beacon to track it underwater, so search operations are underway to look at the latest possible locations.
While it is true that several Xbox 360 controller-like designs are still being used around the world, for example by the US Navy, this particular case seems to stand out. Not only the pad used by the sub is a third party one by Logitech, but it seems to also be not of particular good quality, as reported by several users.
This is being reported by journalist David Pogue, who assisted one such treks last year and mentions that "they got lost for around 5 hours and adding such a beacon was discussed". He also mentions that, while the submarine was lost and could only receive short text messages, the internet on the ship he was on was shut off, so that they could not communicate their problems with the external world.
Naturally, the news sent Twitter ablaze with comments. "A manned submarine was being controlled with the same knock off PS2 pad I used to get into emulation in 2007?" says one bewildered user on Twitter. Others comment on how people paid thousands of dollars only to be put in what many are calling "a death trap".
Still, the journalist reports that the submarine has 96 hours of air so he’s “optimistic" about the search and rescue operation being successful. But, if it was for us, we would not want to be trapped in one of those. Not even if it had a first party Nintendo Switch pro controller.