Veering a bit OT, but I wish I could afford one of these, it looks amazing: http://nanotechent.com/pinball-wizard.php

And I probably could afford it if I didn't blow all my savings on games here.

Well my brother drunk my money and sleeps now.. I drunked because it was right thing to do. well.. no looking back now.

Or is it drinked? well.. what ever.

And edit: If it is pinball and has two flippers and one nudge option. why that bastard silver ball always go straight in a bag.. not in a good bag. And threepwood said: I sell these fine leather jackets..

X360 wireless pad for PC is just a great thing, it instantly made all games involving cars 500% (roughly) more enjoyable. I also use it for most third person games these days, including Witcher 2. And even some first person like New Vegas are decent with it.

Let's make this as simple as possible:

The PC at its heart is about OPTIONS. On the PC you can use the best input device for every game. Consoles do not have options, they have standards imposed by the platform owners and developers. You have to use the same input device for a shooter as you do for a platformer. PC games are not restricted by this, they have the option to always use the best input device for the game they are playing.

A dual analog pad should be an essential purchase for every gaming PC because it gives you more options, it allows you to play every game they way it plays best for you.

I love what PC gaming has become, now that the X360 controller (and probably the next Xbox controller as well eventually) has turned into a somewhat standard PC gamepad. It's exactly what I've been missing from the time when I played games solely on my Amiga and C64 - best of both worlds. It's become much less of a hassle nowdays than it used to be (remember having to mess with IRQ, DMA and other ports in the configuration, not to mention the autoexec.bat or config.sys).

The great console games that also comes out on PC not only looks better, but you can play it the way you want to, keyboard or mouse. And it's easy to set them up to HDTVs nowadays so you can enjoy the games from your couch. I use one single cable that I connect or disconnect, depending on the game I want to play or where I want to play it. Most graphics cards nowadays supports audio through the HDMI port, so all you need is a HDMI cable.

In an FPS, mouse and keyboard is the only viable way to play. Period.

(disclaimer - obviously there are other viable ways to play, but I like making incendiary and absolute statements)

(another disclaimer - mousers will frag xBox controller players into the mouth of Hell 100% of the time)

But enough lighthearted trolling.

What I hate about my 360 controller have nothing to do with the controller at all. I hate lazy developers who code their games so that if the controller is present, it is the only control option. Dead Space (if I recall correctly) had this terrible design flaw.

I would like to leave my 360 controller permanently connected to my PC. It's my controller of choice for a fair number of titles (like any NFS title, for example)... But I can't because some lackluster ports won't accept mouse and keyboard input if a controller is detected.

That's just bad and sloppy work on the developers part.

I hear you. I have seen those games which assumes that I use it automaticly if it is connected. Propably metro 2033 or something was one of those. And in some games they keep both options on so.. playing with mouse and board and suddenly controllers vibrations started to act. Or maybe it was just crysis 2.s multiplayer demo. Well, minor frustration. But it means that if you forget, that's couple gamestarts.

I've even had games hang because a USB gamepad is connected. We're not talking about a super old game here, too.

I can't play various sports games on the keyboards, the analogue sticks don't really translate well and I lose track of the location of the numerous buttons I have remapped.

Are you serious? A large part of the problem with consolization is that the console controllers suck for many genres, FPS and RTS in particular.

But, the problem is that even if you don't install a gamepad, the games are frequently designed for one, and you don't gain the kind of control that you would have had had the developer chosen a competent control scheme from the beginning.

Other genres OTOH do a lot better with a gamepad, it's just that one shouldn't be stuck getting a gamepad from another platform just because the developer couldn't be arsed to fix the control scheme. Platformers tend to play a lot better with a gamepad.

Yes and no while some hate it without the 360 controller we would not have gained Xinput without xinput we'd still be relying on the studios to add controller support and we'd have the same mess we had 10 years ago instead of just plug and play

I don't get what you're arguing here. You're saying the same thing I said. Best of both worlds, on one platform.

I don't think that I am. I guess in some genres it is the best of two worlds, but there's definitely genres that are significantly worse for having the controller used.

That was my main complaint, for things like platformers it is the best of both worlds, but for things like FPS where games are designed to use a controller, trying to not use one is somewhere between difficult and nigh impossible. Especially given that they often times don't give you the controller information in terms of the controller your using, but in terms of colors or letters that are specific to the controller.

USB HID devices are just plug and play. That, in fact, is the whole point of their existence.