Jan 26 2006

Xbox 360 Controller for Windows: Great hardware, Weak software

Posted by David as Gadzooki News

I was reading an article on Joystiq, and I was like “why didn’t I write about that!?” as a friend of mine that is using the controller for his PC is having the same problems getting it to work as effectively as it does on the Xbox 360.

We’re going to put the conclusion right here at the top: if you use or would like to use a gamepad for Windows gaming, then it’d be hard to do better than the Xbox 360 Controller for Windows. Nothing tops this controller from a hardware perspective.

However, there are some major software problems that prevent us from fully endorsing the controller. Because anybody can create software to run on Windows, and because Microsoft doesn’t manage, certify, or quality-assure software released for Windows, the gaming experience on Windows lacks the conformity of the Xbox 360 gaming experience.

A friend of mine finds it pretty much useless, even after hours of tweaking the controller to work properly for a single game. I would have to agree with the Joystiq article in saying that Microsoft needs to find a way to create software that will be the middle man for the controller auto-mapping everything properly, with the ability to change it if we want.

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Comments (2)

2 Responses

Brad
21|Aug|2007

I installed the software indows can’t find the software to install it, and from microsofts website. Plugged in the controller, and then…nothing. windows can’t find the software to install it, and it doesn’t show up in the installed controllers window from the controll panel.
Aaron Cook
22|Oct|2008

Look at the Pinnacle Game Profiler, it makes the xbox controller for windows badass
http://www.pinnaclegameprofiler.com/

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