What Was Running the Titanic Submersible? It Could Be a $49.99 Videogame Controller
Tech analysts say videogame controllers are often used in other applications
2 min
The missing submersible headed for the Titanic shipwreck may have been operated by a wireless video game controller that sells online for $49.99.
Stockton Rush, founder and chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, which owns the Titan submersible, said in a 2022 segment with CBS News that the vessel was operated by a video game controller.
“We run the whole thing with this game controller,” Rush said during the news segment, holding what appeared to be a modified wireless gamepad made by computer-peripherals company Logitech International.
It’s unclear if OceanGate Expeditions was using a Logitech controller on the Titan when it started its mission on Sunday. A spokesperson for OceanGate declined to comment. Logitech didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Titan lost contact with the ship monitoring it from the surface one hour and 45 minutes after it began its dive in the North Atlantic on Sunday morning. The Titanic sits about 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface and about 900 miles off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod.
Rescuers are trying to find the submersible before its oxygen runs out, which officials say could happen Thursday morning. The Titan’s five-member crew includes Rush.
The controller the Titan used in the past appeared to be a modified Logitech F710 gamepad with extended joysticks.
An earlier version of OceanGate’s submersible vessels called the Cyclops was operated by a Sony PlayStation 3 controller, according to a 2014 promotional video released by OceanGate.
The Logitech F710 gamepad was first available in 2010. It’s compatible with computers running on the Windows and ChromeOS operating systems.
Such controllers can be adapted for piloting other machines, as long as the controller and the machine are using the same signal, said Michael Pachter, a managing director at Wedbush Securities.
Game controllers are commonly used in applications beyond video games, said Will McKeon-White, an analyst at technology research firm Forrester. The U.S. military and foreign militaries use them to control vehicles and in other applications because they are fairly intuitive and users often have an existing familiarity with them, he said. The Pentagon didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“The problem with the usage of a Logitech controller here isn’t the fact that a game controller was used,” McKeon-White said. “The issue is they chose a really, really cheap model.”
The military typically expects to have a backup when it uses video game controllers, McKeon-White said. That way “it’s not a situation of ‘your life only relies on a video game controller,’ ” he said.
OceanGate didn’t say if there were backup controlling devices available on the Titan.
Pachter said the Logitech gamepad is considered a durable device made of commonplace parts.
“Every single component of that thing is a commodity component that doesn’t break,” he said, though “they do wear out after a while.”
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
Hand-built in Melbourne and limited to just 10 cars a year, the Zeigler/Bailey Z/B 4.4 is reshaping what a modern collector car can be.
The pandemic-fuelled love affair with casual footwear is fading, with Bank of America warning the downturn shows no sign of easing.
