XBOX 360 controller for the PC !!

[hegemon666]

After I read about Microsoft's big plans for Vista becoming a more gaming oriented OS I was extacic! Now Microsoft has released drivers for the wired XBOX 360 controller to work for the pc. There has been little to no mention of this feature in all the hype surrounding the 360 but I bet when vista's release date comes closer the hype for gaming will be back.

In the mean time I have bought a wired controller from TARGET to play around with it. The controller is increadably sturdy and outclases my Saitek P2500 in style and erganomics.

But... There is one drawback. Currently there is no support for the center X 360 button and no remapping tools. And currently game support is pretty low, The only games I have been able to get the controller to function properly on are CoD and CoD2. Even Halo for the PC doesn't work well!

My platformers and emulators have never been so fun! (I also sense that many PC gamers will not trade up their razer mice and ps/2 keyboards, "From My Cold Dead Hands!" )

I would hold off on buying one until more games are supported but this looks to be the solution to the lack of universal gamepad and joystick standards on the P.C.

If anyone knows any good free remaping or profile toos for joysticks or gamepads I would be very greatful.

For those who are curious, here are some links:

Driver Site

ExtremeTech Review

 

[Circuitbreaker8]

You can use it for sports and racing games.....

Wait...I forgot where i'm posting at.

 

[JonnyK]

i have the wireless controller and a plug and play kit, so it goes into a usb port that way. But it still isn't recognized by the drivers so there must be more to the differences between wireless and wired controllers. Hopefully they release the wireless adapter like they said they were going to, or add support for plug and play kits.

 

[Qwerty]

It is also a USB headset device. You plug in ANY standard headset into the bottom of the controller and windows recognizes it as a headset (a separate audio input/output audio hardware)

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=984071

 

[hegemon666]

I've used a headset from a cell phone with the controllet and setup a seperate sound source to go directly to and from teamspeak

It's better than a regular usb headset

 

[Diablo2K]

I use a Xbox controller when flying in Battlefield 2, I use the XBCD drivers and it works great, I also used it for the NFS:Most Wanted demo and it worked great with it. I dont know why the 360 controller would have problems with games sense it is mostly the same controller excpet for the center button, sure it may not work but do you really need it to? I have ttried the old Xbox controller with alot of differant games and never had problems with it working, only thing that dont work are the preasure sensitive buttons, in Windows it all or nothing with them but thtat is just fine with me, I never played a game on Xbox that used them either so its no biggie.

 

[jubei]

I was hoping to pick one of these up so I could play prince of persia 3 on my PC rather than xbox (I just can't get used to action games on a keyboard/mouse). It'd look and sound soo much better.

Can somebody test and see if this controller works with either of the previous pop games (which wont mean much, but it may be a good test.)

 

[Dew]

"Update: We have heard from Microsoft that it plans on supporting the big Guide button, along with the Xbox 360 wireless controllers (using a wireless receiver dongle) in the future. There's no ETA for these updates at this time, but it's good news nonetheless."

Considering that if you simply change the product ID(PID_028E to PID_028F) in the inf file windows recognizes the controller, I'm not supprised. (No, it doesnt fully initialize, but it is handy not having an unknown USB device every time I plug it in to charge while I sleep, XBOX won't charge it all the way unless you leave it on.)