When the Nintendo Switch 2 arrived in June 2025 at $449.99, it came with a 7.9-inch display, a faster processor, and a Joy-Con that doubles as a mouse. What it didn’t come with was a comfortable way to hold it for long sessions. The handheld form factor has always been a compromise between portability and ergonomics, and for players who log serious hours, that compromise starts showing up as wrist fatigue, awkward thumb angles, and a nagging wish for something with a proper grip. The accessory market has tried to fill that space for years, with results ranging from decent to deeply uninspiring.

Abxylute’s answer comes in two forms: the N6 and the N9C, both deck-style controllers purpose-built for Switch 2 play. The N6 wraps the console in a full-size ergonomic grip with Hall-effect joysticks, native 9-axis motion control, a dedicated C Button for GameChat, and adjustable vibration levels the player can cycle through without leaving a session. The N9C leans into personality, drawing from GameCube design DNA with mechanical buttons, trigger switches, and a capacitive joystick system paired with swappable gates.

Designer: Abxylute

Click Here to Buy Now: $79 $110 (28% off) Hurry! Only 10 days left.

Joy-Cons were engineered for flexibility: detachable, shareable, usable solo or in pairs, functional as individual controllers for two-player sessions on a single console. That versatility comes at the cost of ergonomics, because a controller small enough to slide into a rail and function independently will never offer the grip depth, trigger travel, or palm support of something purpose-built for extended solo play. The N6 and N9C abandon that modularity entirely in favor of doing one thing exceptionally well, which is making handheld Switch 2 sessions feel like you’re holding a full-size controller instead of a tablet with thumbsticks glued to the sides. The tactile feedback is immediate and familiar, the kind of responsiveness you get from hardware designed around sustained single-player sessions rather than multi-function compromise. Both controllers connect via wired USB-C, skipping wireless pairing lag entirely, because when the target is solo handheld performance, eliminating variables takes priority over flexibility.

The N6’s open-top design is the first thing people will argue about online, and they’ll mostly be wrong. The Switch 2 stands over 11 cm tall, and a fully enclosed grip pushes that height further, putting your palms in the kind of awkward hover position that builds exactly the fatigue you were trying to avoid. Abxylute held the grip height at 8.5 cm, matching full-size controller proportions, so your palms have something to rest against rather than squeeze. The 7-inch grip width sits narrower than the console body deliberately, keeping your hands at a natural, relaxed spread instead of forcing them wide across a bulky frame. The physics of holding something for two hours straight are pretty straightforward, and this design reads those physics correctly.

Hall-effect joysticks solve a specific, measurable problem that standard potentiometer sticks fundamentally cannot. Potentiometer sticks use resistive contact that physically degrades over repeated use, which is why drift rates climb after a year or two of regular play. Hall-effect reads joystick position magnetically, with zero physical contact between moving components, and the N6 bumps the stick travel angle to 23 degrees compared to 18 degrees on Joy-Con, giving your thumbs more range for fine-grained inputs. A POM anti-wear ring around each stick handles mechanical stability without adding stiffness or noise to the movement. It’s a small detail, but the kind that separates purpose-built hardware from a generic controller with a different shell. On a device you use daily, that engineering choice compounds in your favor in a way that contact-based sticks simply never will.

Inputs across the N6 break down by material type, and the distinctions matter. ABXY buttons use conductive rubber for cushioned presses that reduce finger fatigue; the D-pad uses tactile switches for sharper directional accuracy; shoulder buttons deliver tactile clicks for faster responses in action-heavy play; and the linear digital triggers provide a genuine 0-100% input range rather than binary on/off clicks. That trigger range matters considerably in racing games and anything relying on gradual pressure inputs. Vibration adjusts at four levels, 0%, 40%, 70%, and 100%, switchable via button combo directly on the controller, bypassing the game-by-game settings adjustment that the Pro Controller requires. The grip’s internal structure forms a resonance chamber that redirects the Switch 2’s speakers forward and reinforces bass by around 10%, which you’ll register in a quiet room as fuller, punchier audio than bare Joy-Cons produce.

The N9C is doing something more niche and, honestly, more interesting. Where the N6 chases Pro Controller parity, the N9C chases the GameCube controller’s specific feel, complete with a centered A button and asymmetric face layout, rebuilt for a modern console using mechanical micro-switches and ALPS tactile shoulder buttons. Capacitive joysticks sidestep magnetic interference entirely, and the swappable 8-way and circular gate rings mean you can dial in a tight directional gate for fighters and swap to a smooth circular gate for platformers. A built-in battery hatch holds two replaceable batteries that reverse-charge the Switch 2 directly during play. Most grips on the market ignore battery life almost entirely, and a reverse charge system that powers the Switch 2 directly from the controller is a differentiator almost nothing else in this category offers.

The N9C carries four programmable rear buttons, two per side compared to the N6’s one per side, and each supports the same macro-recording system that chains directional inputs and actions into a single trigger. Switch 2 system-level button remapping works natively, requiring no third-party software, so a custom layout travels across every game without reconfiguring anything. An integrated rear stand sets the N9C apart from virtually every grip in this category, giving the Switch 2 a propped tabletop angle without relying on the console’s own kickstand. The primary connection is wired USB-C for ultra-low latency, with BLE available for configuration only, keeping the input chain clean during actual play. Every N9C ships with both C-stick and ring-style joystick caps in the box, so players can dial in the stick feel before the packaging hits the trash.

Mass production kicked off in March 2026, with shipping expected between April and June. Super Early Bird pricing runs $79 for the N6 (retail $110) and $89 for the N9C (retail $120), with a bundle sitting at $159. Nintendo’s own Pro Controller for Switch 2 retails at $79.99 and carries none of the Hall-effect sticks, programmable back buttons, or turbo functionality. Abxylute has shipped over 120,000 units across more than 20 projects to 100,000-plus customers, so the production infrastructure exists. What they’re solving for is specific: handheld Switch 2 play that performs at Pro Controller level without forcing players to accept the Joy-Con’s ergonomic ceiling as permanent.

Click Here to Buy Now: $79 $110 (28% off) Hurry! Only 10 days left.

The post A GameCube Controller on the Nintendo Switch 2? Meet Abxylute’s Deck-style Joy-Con Alternatives first appeared on Yanko Design.

The retro handheld market has a strange problem. The hardware keeps getting better, the screens get sharper, the processors get faster, and yet most of these devices land looking like prototypes someone forgot to finish. Generic shells, forgettable proportions, and LED lighting as a substitute for actual design thinking. For a category built entirely on nostalgia, very few of these devices actually look like they belong to any era at all.

That tension is what one Reddit user decided to address. Starting with a Retroid Pocket 5, a $199 Android handheld running a Snapdragon 865 and a 5.5-inch AMOLED display, the mod layers Sony and Nintendo branding onto the same shell. Vinyl decals, translucent polycarbonate, a 3D-printed volume rocker from Etsy, and a cable replaced in PS2 color. The result looks less like a sticker job and more like a concept render from an alternate 1999.

Designer: Mitchieyan

The translucent shell is doing most of the work. It pulls from the visual language of the N64’s Funtastic series, those clear and atomic-purple controllers Nintendo released in the late 1990s, where showing the circuitry was the design choice rather than concealing it. Over a piano-black grip body with PlayStation-colored face buttons, the frosted polycarbonate shifts from grey to near-white depending on the light. It shouldn’t feel considered. It does.

The branding placement is where intent becomes clear. The Sony wordmark sits centered on the upper face, exactly where it appeared on a PSOne. Below it, the PlayStation four-color logo. At the bottom bezel, the Nintendo badge mirrors its position on a Game Boy Advance SP. None of it is licensed, of course. These are adhesive vinyls placed by someone who grew up with both systems and wanted their coexistence on one device to feel inevitable rather than absurd.

Not everything here reaches backward. The analog sticks are translucent caps over hall-effect sensors, lit teal on the left and purple on the right, owing nothing to 1999. That generation didn’t have RGB anything. The lighting reads as a concession to the present; the one feature announcing this is still an Android device in 2025, not a prototype from some alternate Sony-Nintendo licensing meeting. Whether it sits comfortably alongside the retro shell is a fair question.

The rear view shifts the frame again. A large dual-grip body in smooth black rubber dominates the back, a clear plastic hinge connecting the screen to grip in full view, structural and unapologetic. The 3D-printed volume rocker at the top edge puts a physical control where fingers naturally land. The back half feels closer to a DualShock than a Game Boy, which is either the point or the problem, depending on what you wanted this thing to be.

Flip to the front screen, and the emulator grid makes the whole thing literal. DuckStation for PS1, Dolphin for GameCube, PPSSPP for PSP, melonDS for Nintendo DS, and a live PS2 wallpaper cycling behind all of it. This device runs both companies’ libraries simultaneously without asking permission from either. The branding on the shell, in that context, stops being a novelty and starts reading as a plain statement of what the hardware already does.

The retro handheld category is large enough now that sameness has become its default. The Retroid Pocket 6, the current flagship from the same manufacturer, drew community criticism for being indistinguishable from competitors: glass front, LED sticks, rounded edges, and no particular character. A fan mod building identity out of borrowed logos is one response to a problem the manufacturers haven’t solved. It’s also just someone enjoying a hobby and being honest about what they want.

The hardware to play PS1, PS2, GameCube, and Game Boy Advance all on one screen already exists and costs under $200. What the market hasn’t resolved is what that device should actually look like, or whose name should go on it. This mod doesn’t answer either question. It just makes the gap between what’s technically possible and what anyone has bothered to design feel a little harder to dismiss.

The post This Fan Made the Sony-Nintendo Handheld the Companies Never Would first appeared on Yanko Design.