The United Kingdom is known for many things—its bizarre love of monarchy, its militant football fans, its ever-increasing cost of living, and, of course, drinking tea. When I lived in England, drinking tea became a part of my personality as well, so much so that I had a favorite (Twinings). But even I, an American who has more understanding of British culture than most, cannot understand for the life of me who the fuck would want to buy Yorkshire Tea-branded PlayStation 5 and Xbox controllers that cost £150.
The controllers, which are currently on sale at the official Yorkshire Tea store site, are designed by POPeART, a company that, as far as I can tell, also sells NFTs. The design is meant to reference the box in which Yorkshire Tea bags come, with bright red on the DualSense touchpad and along the bottom-right part of the Xbox Series X/S controller. The bucolic British field seen on the box is also emblazoned on them, complete with a cute little sheep in the bottom left.
But they are, for some reason, more than double the cost of a standard controller for either console—£150 is about $190, while buying a regular ol’ DualSense or Xbox gamepad in the land of tea and crumpets will run you about £60. And they don’t come with any special goodies, either. Yorkshire Tea’s official X (formerly Twitter) account acknowledged the price, saying:
Sorry they’re not cheaper! Believe it or not we’re not making money on these. It’s a small run of a Popeart custom design which we originally pondered just making one of as a marketing thing, and then thought: what if we actually make them available to buy?
As of the time of writing, both controllers still appear to be in stock, though they’re only available in the UK. I know that there’s a chasm of cultural differences between us and our former rulers, but I truly cannot wrap my head around who would want to spend so much on these—especially since the designs appear to be custom wraps and aren’t printed directly on the pads.
Anyway, I’m off to go do the much more American thing: spend $150 on a routine healthcare visit.