Manufacturer : Extreme Enterprises

RRP : $21.00 (approx not incl. freight)

Available : Extreme Enterprises

The Xbox controllers are a pretty cool colour, some kind of dark green/black hybrid that looks pretty funky but if you’re bored with it, the only option you’ve had until now has been to buy one of the Microsoft coloured controllers or use some of the Xbox skins from Pinkie Online.

With this in mind Extreme Enterprises offer a whole range of replacement cases for your S controllers that come in all sorts of colours such as purple, orange through to chrome and almost everything in between. I was interested in checking out just how good the quality is on third party cases such as these so XBW grabbed hold of a couple. With our fiery tempers resulting in plenty of controllers being thrown across the XBW gaming den we thought that we’d go for the Ruby Red case, at least that should make it easier to see when it turns from controller into surface to air missile.

The instructions that come on the packaging explain almost everything you need to know. The only exception being the screws that you need to remove for the D-Pad but the manufacturers website has a pretty good tutorial that covers everything nicely. One cool idea that Extreme Enterprises thought of was a replacement sticker for the bottom of the controller as you may wreck the original one when you take it off to get to one of the screws.

We spent some time swapping the boring black case on one of our controllers over for the ruby red one and all up it only took about 25 minutes. To complete the conversion all you will need are two screwdrivers, a small Phillips head one and a smaller, jewelry style one as well.

First off you need to locate the seven screws underneath the controller. One is hidden by the silver sticker so you need to peel this off as well. Once these are removed your controller should come apart pretty easily. Take care not to lose any of the screws or face buttons once you have your controller apart. The vibration motors will hang loose from their wires so be careful not to yank those off as well.

Next you will need to remove the memory card slot. This is pretty easy as it just clips on over the connector areas. The D-Pad also needs to be removed and will still be in the top of your old controller. It is held in place with two clips and tiny screws and this is where your smaller screwdriver will come in handy. Undo the two screws and unclip it and put it aside with the first seven screws. It actually pays to have something like a film canister handy for putting these in so you don’t lose them.

Once you have all the insides of the controller sitting in front of you it’s just a matter of reversing everything and installing it all back into the new case.

The controller board sits in place and the vibration motors have little areas where they sit as well. The tricky part I found at first was getting the face buttons lined up, but then I noticed that if you turn the face panel of the new case over, the buttons drop into dedicated slots for them so that you don’t end up with them the wrong way around. It was easier to work back to front a little bit by dropping all the buttons in and then slowly sandwiching the back and front of the case together making sure that all the internals are in their proper places. Don’t forget to put the D-pad into the top of the new controller case first and also make sure that the controller cable lines up properly as you push it all together.

It’s just a simple matter of then holding the controller nice and tight, turning it over and replacing all the seven original screws. I did them all up just a tiny bit and then tightened them all one by one until they were back to normal. Then all that’s left is to use the replacement sticker that’s provided and you have yourself a brand new controller in a colour not available in any store anywhere!

Looks pretty sweet eh! Everything went much easier than I thought it would and the build quality of the new Ruby case was extremely high. Everything fits the way it’s meant to and there were no issues with screw holes being out of alignment or shoddy plastics. If you want to liven up a couple of S controllers that you have lying around then these cases come recommended. At the moment they are selling for $15.99 US$ which works out to be around just over $21 Aus. With postage you end up spending almost half the cost of a brand new controller but you end up with a pretty snazzy looking one that your friends will be jealous of!