The idea for Thumb Soldiers was originally conceived years ago from the desire to improve the playability of Gran Turismo... and Tony Hawk's and Crash Bandicoot, Tekken and and and and....

Having played GT since the first release, maintaining control of the controller has always been met with frustration... especially at those most critical moments. Combined with the limited range of control resulting in 'on / off' steering and breaking. However much the controller internals have evolved to cater for incremental input, the thumb stick has remained the same..

But the idea stayed as an idea... bouncing around for years with no obvious solution... How would an attachment stay in place, how would it adjust to suit different hands, would it even work....

Then there was the epiphany. What if there was a virtually solid connection to the controller that in turn allows for all the other attachments you've been dreaming of.. the step up one, the joystick one, the football one... we could create attachments for those with disabilities so everyone can use the standard controller and not be shackled by the industrial adaptive units on the market... we could, we could.. we could do anything!

Oh, hang on..... How on earth are we going to achieve this without tools or disassembly. No one's going to want to take their controller apart, you're pretty handy and you wouldn't take a controller apart. Well, we can't screw to it, but it's got to fix securely...It's got to be easy... It's got to have a low profile... it can't clash with the directional input, it's got to look good.. it's got to... it's got to....

This isn't going to be easy...Maybe this isn't a good idea.... Ah, let's give it a go anyway.... how hard can it be, if we don't, who will? Transpires, really frikin hard. Some might say, it's one of those 'if you had known at the beginning, would ya'? But all the signs were there, and we ignored them for the goal of improving gaming and disrupting how we all interact with our controllers forever more. If we don't do it now, we'll likely be using the same controller setups in 10 years' time. Not acceptable!

However, first let's try and talk ourselves out of it shall we... someone must be doing this already, surely, in hindsight the requirement seems too strong... If someone else has already created this but we've just never seen it, we can't be stepping on toes. Let's search the world for any product that comes close...Nope, OK, Let's search globally for patents that stop us in our tracks... Really, no one is doing this....How has this never been done before?

Does that mean we're committed, does that mean it's our destiny to bring this to gamers around the world... Looks that way... Again, how hard can it be... best finalise these designs.

Prototype one, quickly become prototype 2, which in turn quickly became prototype 200, and that was just the knuckle, not taking into consideration all the iterations of Soldiers to get the right feel, the right size, the right offset... They look simple but as the great man, Bruce Lee said, Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

So, without going into the operations of finding the right people to work with, finding investment to get this off the ground, finding and running an extensive product testing program, learning how to market something like this, something brand new, that no one else is doing, that there isn't really an existing market to compare against.... this is where we are. Launching this beautiful product that we hope will bring joy to everyone that uses it. Be it from simply being able to play, to being able to play better than ever before, Thumb Soldiers is for everyone.

The future of Thumb Soldiers is a future of community. Our objective is for this to be for everyone and for everyone to be integral to the development of Thumb Soldiers, integral to the development of game interaction. In return we intend to offer a community where the community participates and is rewarded for their involvement, rewarded at every opportunity that we can provide..... Join the journey! We can't wait to meet you.

David Chapman
Inventor/Founder