Microsoft Unveils New Xbox 360 Wireless Controller 150
adeelarshad82 writes "Microsoft unveiled a new wireless Xbox 360 controller, which features a revamped D-pad that transforms from a plus to a disc. The new D-pad was developed to address complaints from users. Other new features include: A, B, X, and Y buttons that are gray instead of the standard red, green, yellow, and blue; and a matte silver color. The controller includes 2.4-GHz wireless technology with a 30-foot range."
No colors = terrible choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting rid of the colors on the buttons seems baseless. I can't tell you how many times...
Me: "Press A" ::moving thumbs, squinting:: "... huh?"
Her:
Me: "Green."
The twisty d-pad is cute, but largely strikes me as a way of getting around Nintendo's killer patent on the golden standard. I can't imagine who would want to use the disc, except for perhaps fighting games.
Play&Charge sucks, I hate having to mess around with dongly wires and other crap to use my controller just get rechargeable batteries.
Re:About time (Score:3, Interesting)
Yah, and in order to fix it they've added even more mechanical complexity to it - now you can raise and lower the + part of it, making it either a disk or a plus.
So instead of Microsoft sticking to one thing and making it work well, they let the user pick between two half-assed solutions! Hooray!
Wrong thing to talk about on the d-pad (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, take a 360 controller, hold left on the d-pad, and at the same time try to rock your thumb toward the up and down directions. It moves a lot! Using one on Windows, you can see in the controller properties how easily it registers diagonal presses. Now do the same thing with a Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2, which has a very similar d-pad. It's far less finicky than the 360 pad.
So really, how is this new d-pad supposed to fix that?
Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, I have 5, YES 5 360 wireless controllers. Two on my game machine hooked to the projector. Two on my 8 year old son's PC and one on my daughter's PC. The X-Box 360 controller is the best thing ever to have to gaming on the PC. Finally a standard PC joystick. It only took a billion years. Last time there was a standard game controller for the PC was the original two button, analog axis controller in the 80's that you needed a separate A/D card (there was no sound cards yet) to connect to the machine. It was the biggest piece of crap ever, but the 360 controller is AWESOME. A standard console grade controller for the PC.
Well that said, once I got these controllers, I bought all the Lego games (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman and Harry Potter), I bought Tomb Raider and piles of other games. After all, the PC just became the most powerful console and the best part is, it plays games from nearly every old console and it also plays Blu-ray etc...
Well, my kids LOVE playing games on the PC with their controllers. When the game says "press the green button", they press the green button. In the room with the projector (a cheap little 100 lumen BenQ Joybee) you can see the colors, but not the letters on the buttons. Also, since the projector typically is downscaling 1280x1024 to 800x600, it is really quite hard to read letters on the screen (even when playing Wii). So, the colors are GREAT.
Here comes Microsoft to tell us that if any of our controllers break, we'll be replacing them with controllers of lower usability. Oh well... good thing couldn't last forever could it? Let's just hope that Logitech and others don't change.
Re:They did what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Did colorblind players hate the colored buttons?
Nope. I have the red/green issue, but I could see the red and green of the buttons fine. It's generally not a problem with very bright colors. *shrug* At this point the locations are second nature to me. Quickly from memory: Left X Blue, Right B Red, Down A Green and Up Y Yellow.
Re:Wrong thing to talk about on the d-pad (Score:3, Interesting)
I love the D-pad and was sad to see it get ruined over the years. The NES, SNES and N64 controller got it right: nice large size, good button depth, and the area around and underneath the D pad was minimal.
The biggest problem with the xbox360 controller isn't the shape of the Dpad, it's too much plastic around and underneath it. The sega genesis controller has the same shape but it felt fine because when you held it there was a nice sized gap between the edge of the controller and the size edge of your palm and the "pinch" distance was small.
Take the SNES controller for example, the left edge of the controller to the d pad is only 18mm and the thickest part from the back of the controller to the top of the dpad is 22.3mm. The xbox260 is 36.5mm from left edge to dpad and 32mm from back to surface of dpad. That's just too much plastic to get in the way of thumb movement.
There's also the problem that the Dpad is really a giant stick. The total thickness of the plastic in the xbox dpad is something like 20mm, the SNES is 9mm (these are estimate measurements unlike the previous).
Re:Still sucks. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hey Microsoft, here's why your D-Pad sucks (Score:1, Interesting)
The EVO Super Street Fighter 4 finals featured not one, but two pad players in the top 8 this year.
I prefer an arcade stick as well, but it's not universal.
(For those who don't know, EVO is the largest fighting game tournament held anually in the USA.)
This and live going up in price... (Score:3, Interesting)
Xbox live will go up by 20% and the controller prices as well.
Thanks Microsoft!
I'm letting my "gold" account expire and will be getting a VuDu box or another device to do netflix. I'm not paying $60.00 a year for their barely useful service.
Re:As a Tester (Score:3, Interesting)
You're fighting with a gamepad? Ick. Invest ina good quality fightstick already (there are several, some with arcade parts). That d-pad's only been used as a way to get another 4 extra buttons to control stuff for other games, I didn't thing games used it as a primary control input. I never played SF4, but I would've thought they would've made the analog stick "digital" for those without fightsticks, but that's like playing Guitar Hero/Rock Band without the plastic instrument - yeah you can do it, but why would you.
I just wish Sony would stop being idiots, and make a nice ergonomic controller. After using the 360 controller, I can't use the PS3 one without cramping up, and games using the left analog get painful since they use the d-pad as 4 extra buttons. (I ended up getting a Cross Battle Adapter 2.0 - lets you use the Xbox360 wired controller with the PS3, supports rumble, button remaps, and sixaxis if you give up one of the analogs).
Honestly I wish they just used the old Sega D-Pad (Score:3, Interesting)