I know a pad is not ideal for FPS, but somehow, with the help of MS? Gamers were convinced this was the way to play FPS...how did this happen? Why are devs focusing on the lowest common denominator for shooters?

Easy to program. Easy to play. Games on console sell a bundle. Probably few more reasons i guess..

Consoles make way more money than PC. The games will go where the money is, I suppose...

I got to concur with you.

My friends got used to the double stick whatnot and think it's normal now, but on both instances when they showed me a shooter on their consoles, I couldn't wrap my brain around the controls.

It felt really clumsy compared to a mouse and I didn't understand why they didn't opt for a shooter on the PC (though quite frankly, I'm still at a loss concerning why consoles haven't adopted a mouse yet which is the intuitive choice for some games).

Like other posters posted, game designers mainly go where the money is even if the platform is clearly inferior for their game. My friends know better as they are of my generation and played all the PC shooting classics after the original Doom.

Somehow, they just wrapped their minds around the console controllers (even for shooters) and seem to have stop minding that the mouse is a superior tool for many games.

If I wasn't allergic to the notion of owning redundant hardware for gaming only and wanted the freshest shooters on release, I would probably have resigned myself to those controllers too.

Since 2005, fpses have become consolized.

I hate the auto recovery mechanism....takes away from the immersion. Made sense in Halo, since the protagonist happens to be a cyborg. However in game like call of duty, it is just plain friggin' retarded.

I try to steer clear from consolized ports of fps. This is something that has pervaded the essence of the approach towards game design. Most games today, re-makes even are dumbed down to appease the masses.

It's about preferences. For example, people have made pad emulators for playing PC games because they like playing games with game pads, and not because they're looking for the most perfect, optimal, stupendously strategic way to play a game.

It's not elitist, it's just how it is. The limitations of a controller are most apparent in FPS games. This is also why cross-platform multiplayer has never really worked for FPS's. If you did put PC players and console players up against each other on the same servers, the console players would have their asses handed to them.

Unreal Tournament 3 was originally supposed to feature cross-platform multiplayer, until they realized that in order to make the game at all playable on consoles, they had to lower the speed of the gameplay in the console versions to 80% of the speed of the gameplay in the PC version. After that, they gave up on cross-platform multiplayer.

the crossplatform cannot work with fps as mouse and keyboard beats pad every single time. a crappy player with a m&k will beat the crap out of best gamepad player

You can't say that about a high level FPS any more than you can about Street Fighter or Star Craft.

A lot of people who game only on consoles don't know Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, or Unreal anything. Mouse/Keyboard trumps gamepad any day of the week for accuracy. I remember when Shadowrun was an FPS they actually had to add inaccuracy to the PC gamers from average players spanking good console players.

I think it basically boils down to where the money is. I don't have any facts or figures in front of me, but I would assume that even given that a PC version and a console version ran identically well that the console version would far outsell the PC version. Given that, the publishers put their focus where the most money is; on the consoles. Now, mouse/keyboard may trump controller on certain types of games, but I for one don't want to sit on my couch and try and balance a mouse and keyboard on my lap. That's why I do most of my FPS and RTS gaming on a PC. I never did get the hang of a controller for FPS.

Its all about money.
A console game sells better and the price is higher for a longer time. And they have a clearly defined machine without
dozens of different cpu's, gpu's and drivers.
The real good part about the next gen is that console only titles will be less cause the programing costs too much.

Games like Timesplitters made console FPS fun. Then they got others like Halo first. So they managed with timely titles at the right difficulty level/cinematic quality.

Simple: By moneyhatting premier FPS developer (Bungie and Epic).