Motorola’s Moto Z smartphones are designed to work with add-ons that snap onto the back of the phone, including speakers, battery packs, and projectors, among other things. They’re called Moto Mods, and in June Motorola announced four new modules were on the way, including one that gives any Moto Z smartphone physical game controller buttons.

The company promised the Moto GamePad would sell for $80, but that’s about all we knew at the time.

Now we also know when and where you’ll be able to buy one: August 25th, from Verizon.

For some reason, the Moto GamePad will be available exclusively through Verizon, at least at launch. You don’t necessarily need to be a Verizon wireless customer to buy one, but it’s still an oddly limiting choice.

The Moto GamePad is already a relatively expensive smartphone accessory that works with a relatively small number of phones. Telling customers they can’t buy one from Motorola.com, Amazon, Best Buy, or other retailers seems like an odd choice.

The GamePad features a 1,035 mAh battery that’s said to offer up to 8 hours of additional battery life for the phone (presumably when you’re not using it to play games), and adds dual control sticks, a D-pad, and action buttons that you can use during mobile gaming sessions.

via Android Central

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5 replies on “Moto GamePad is coming soon for $80… as a Verizon exclusive”

  1. It’s not that odd. Without Verizon, Motorola would barely exist. VZW helped Moto achieve a brief reign at the top of the Android pile before Samsung took over, and then weirdly didn’t abandon them on their long slide into obscurity. They kept raising Moto’s profile, using their droid branding to prop them up and then spend to market them.

    Exclusivity can be frustrating for consumers, but it’s a tough business when you’re not on top. You gotta take any advantage to stay in the game. Any other manufacturer would kill to have the support and loyalty VZW has given moto over the years, especially in the lean times. Moto would be crazy not to foster that relationship any chance they get.

    1. Yes, true.
      Although on the other hand, it really damages Motorola to not be able to sell their phone and their accessories to people in the USA. This exclusivity hurts them too. And Verizon’s push of MotoBlur hurt them in the past. CarrierIQ hurt them as well. How about the promised updates on the Photon and Ultra.

      Exclusivities are only good to get your foot in the door. It’s what Apple did, with AT&T and the iPhone.
      Once you have some reputation and enough money to continue your business, its ideal to make your product inclusive to as many consumers as possible.

      Motorola were doing quite well in 2007/2008/2009, and they were reputable too.
      They could’ve designed and sold phones by sourcing the parts and building them in China the way HTC does. They could’ve used intelligence to spec their phones competitively, name them something that makes sense, and do some marketing. But instead, it was all about bureaucracy from the higher ups preventing them from ever successfully competing with HTC, let alone Samsung or Apple.

      I’ve been burned by that Moto brand one too-many times, and so I don’t trust them. And now they’ve been sold by their original owners, and Google, I trust them even less as a subsidiary for the questionable Lenovo firm. I KNEW something like this would happen, the Z2 Force seemed too good for that tainted brand. And I so I hope people stop buying Motorola’s and stop supporting the “bad” carriers. Hurting them where it hurts the most: their wallet, is the best way forward for the public to ignite competition in a broken system.

      1. Remember the days when Verizon’s quality control people decided the HTC Touch Pro needed to have less RAM on vzw than on every other carrier xD. They really saved their users from a bad experience there. Good times.

        But honestly, they all suck in their own way. Everyone should use the phone and carrier that meets more of their needs than the others.

        I bought a Z Play and I’m getting a high quality landscape, tilting sliding keyboard soon. No one else has offered that in a long time. Actually, I can’t remember there ever being a tilting qwerty on Android. So AFAIC, moto is at the top of the pack.

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