Microsoft SideWinder

» see microsoft.com/hardware as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

microsoft sidewinder was the brand microsoft put on pc gaming peripherals from october 1995, starting with the 3d pro joystick. the gamepad followed a year later, in september 1996. by august 1998 the force feedback 2 had shipped with serial-port motors strong enough to push the stick back at you when you got shot in mechwarrior. that was the cultural artifact of the first era.

the joystick line went quiet around 2003. honestly, microsoft revived sidewinder in 2007 as a gaming mouse line and then a gaming keyboard. the x8 wireless mouse shipped in february 2009. by october 2014, microsoft no longer sold any gaming mice or keyboards under the brand in the us. there was no announcement. the sku list just emptied out.

i never owned a sidewinder. force feedback joysticks were a pc magazine cover-story thing in the late 90s, not a 33.6k modem house reality in ankara. the local pc scene ran on keyboard-and-mouse counter-strike from 2002 onward, and joysticks belonged to the flight-sim subculture that never really had a turkish presence (more or less). i recognized the brand from the boxes at the import shops without ever planning to buy one.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the joystick era ~

the first sidewinder era ran from 1995 to 2003. the 3d pro had a twist-handle that mapped to rudder. the precision pro added an analog throttle on the side. force feedback 2 stacked motors into the base so the stick could fight back. microsoft positioned the line against thrustmaster and ch products, and for a while it was the obvious starter joystick at the office-supply tier of distribution. then flight sims contracted and the joystick category became enthusiast-only, which is not a market microsoft has ever been good at staying in.

~ the mouse revival ~

the 2007 reboot was a different brand inside the same name. the sidewinder mouse was a chunky black thing with a thumb-side metallic weight tray that you could load with five small cylinders to dial in the heft. razer and logitech were already running the high-end gaming mouse market when microsoft showed up, and the sidewinder x8 wireless was just enough product to compete on spec without ever being the one people actually bought (this is the part i half-remember from frmtr threads at the time). the brand wound down in 2014 with no goodbye.

~ the long tail ~

the older joysticks still work on modern windows through usb adapters, in the small population of people who still play flight sims and rally games from that era. microsoft's hardware line continued without the sidewinder name through the regular wired and bluetooth keyboard catalog. the gaming-peripherals chapter ended quietly, the way most microsoft brand discontinuations do.

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