Turtle Beach is buying gamepad maker PDP

Gaming accessory company Turtle Beach has announced it’s getting into the controller collecting game and buying PDP for a cool $118 million. PDP getting bought could be a good thing, depending on how you feel about its slate of generally affordable and fun-colored controllers.

Turtle Beach has added a lot of accessory irons to the gaming fire in the last couple years, including forays into flight yokes and the recently-announced Velocity One racing wheel. It sells controllers too, but it only began doing so in 2021, and doesn’t sell any for PlayStation or Nintendo consoles.

Image: PDP

Gamepads are PDP’s bread and butter — and it’s got licenses to sell them for every major console. The company’s most recognizable ones might be its GameCube-style Fight Pads for the Wii U, themed after Nintendo characters and nakedly intended for Super Smash Bros. enthusiasts. You know, those who insist that the gigantic green A button, small red B button, and kidney bean-shaped X and Y buttons represent the One True Layout for that game. (I tend to agree.)

More recently, though, PDP’s controllers have gotten more experimental — and fun — like this transparent controller that isn’t just transparent but also a diorama, or this Victrix Pro BFG that can transform into a portable fightstick. The company also has arcade-style joysticks for those who play “real” fighting games like Street Fighter II or Street Fighter II World Championship Edition. (I’m sorry, I haven’t been on that scene in a while. Just pretend I said the good new ones.)

Today’s announcement apparently could’ve been very different, as Turtle Beach writes that before it decided to buy PDP, it also considered selling itself to another company.

It’s no Microsoft buying Activision, but this purchase is one in a steady stream of accessory maker consolidation that has seen Logitech, Corsair, and Razer gobble up vendor after vendor and category after category. Most recently, Logitech picked up editing console maker Loupedeck, and Corsair acquired Drop. PDP will be the third recent buy for Turtle Beach, after it nabbed Roccat in 2019 and Neat Microphones in 2021.