A Titan submersible with five people on board has crashed and gone missing while diving into the ocean while exploring the wreck of the legendary Titanic. Subsequently, the authorities found scattered shipwrecks on the seabed nearly 500m from the bow of the Titanic.
U.S. Coast Guard Commander Rear Admiral John Mauger said the debris indicated a "catastrophic explosion" aboard the tourist submersible Titan, killing all five people on board.
After the unfortunate incident, word spread about controlling the Titan Submersible with a $30 gamepad. The $29.99 battery-powered game controller used to control the Titanic submarine has reportedly received hundreds of complaints since it launched in 2010.
According to Daily Mail, OceanGate, the company conducting the excursion, revealed that the Titan submersible is navigated by a modified Logitech G F710, initially launched in 2010.
According to the report, the controller, which runs on two AA batteries, has an overall score of 4.2 out of five on Amazon. Moreover, the device has also received hundreds of one-star reviews dating back more than a decade.
One Amazon reviewer expressed disappointment, stating that the controllers ended up being discarded after just four months of use.
Additionally, the Logitech G F710 Wireless Gamepad can only be used with Windows and Chrome systems that were released a decade ago.
We run everything on the ship with this controller," said Stockton Rush, Chief Executive of OceanGate Expeditions, the seafloor exploration company that operates the Titan, when announcing its commissioning in 2022. The controller holds the Logitech G F710 model number but doesn't specify whether the product can be customized to match the design of the submersible.
The news about the missing Titan submarine, which used Logitech's controller, caused a three percent drop in the company's stock on Wednesday morning. Over the past five days, it has experienced a four percent decline.
However, for writer Mike Reiss, who has dived with Titan 4 times, piloting the ship with a gamepad shows how simple and easy to control the ship is, and he even thinks it's a good thing.
According to reporter Pogue, the passengers in the carriage will not be able to get out on their own. At the same time, even if the missing person is rescued, few will sign up for the expedition.
The Titan submersible is reportedly owned by OceanGate, a private submersible company that offers tours of the Titanic wreck for $250,000 per person.
The Titan began its journey on the morning of June 18, but lost contact with its mother ship, the Polar Prince, about 1 hour and 45 minutes later. Authorities later announced that five passengers were confirmed died from by "catastrophic explosion".
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