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Microsoft Unveils New Xbox 360 Wireless Controller
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."
That D-Pad is shit. I can understand not being quite up-to-snuff for playing a game, but you can't even navigate menus with that thing. Forget about entering text. I can't believe it took this long to address "complaints" about the utter worthlessness of those buttons.
What's the reason behind that? Did colorblind players hate the colored buttons? Aren't a lot of games referring to the button colors instead of the button letters?
As for that transformer D-pad... The plus is still there in so-called disc mode, they should have made the remaining parts taller and concave to actually make a disc shape once the plus part is lowered. As usual, Microsoft has a good idea but screws up the implementation.
And the silver color... all I can say is that the circle is complete. The new cool color for electronics is silver, like in the '70s! Next year, fake wood grain!
Truly remarkable.
How did they do it?
It is seriously about time! The D-pad on the current controllers is absolutely awful (for those who don't know, often times it registers the wrong direction due to poor mechanical design). It has made some games (especially live-arcade games like megaman 9) incredibly frustrating.
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.
So let's see - Microsoft is a monopoly that destroys companies on a number of fronts, has ongoing uneasy relationship of take and no give with the open source community, hurts consumers through various acts of evil, and then gets into the game business with its monopoly money sustaining the kind of huge loses that normal companies could not withstand.
Sony riled up the /. community primarily because of its copy protection efforts - the Lik Sang cease & desist, had the infamous copy protection scandal, and removed the other OS option.
And for that, Sony is "almost so evil" in comparison? I think that the scale of evil has been distorted somewhat.
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?
It isn't because of the disc, it's because of the way that the d-pad acts when you play fighting games (which is about the only reason you'd actually need a revamped D-Pad in the first place). Why is it that every podunk Japanese fighting pad manufacturer out there can put out a pad which works fine with a game like Street Fighter, but you can't seem to get a handle on it? Look at ASCII's pads, figure out what they do, and replicate it. Problem solved.
I don't actually have an X-Box 360, haven't figured out what I would need one for. It doesn't play Blu-Ray, almost every 360 game worth playing will also be released for Wii or PC, so why have yet another box.
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.
I have Xbox and I use it on older CRT television. Some games give you a hint a they tell you to press a button. Because of the crapy resolution I can't recognize the letter, but I see the color. With this controller it will be harder. And how often do you use the D-pad?
There already is a colour hack. It requires you to sneak into your sister's bedroom and to nick a few of her nail varnishes. You now have the luxury of brushing any colour you like on any button you want. Soon you will lovingly nickname your controller spotted dick.
Let the varnish dry and voila, you're the coolest kid on the block.
PS: Finding sex toys during your quest is perfectly normal. Admire your sis' liberated state! Let religion rest for a bit.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I never understood why the quality of d-pads has steadily taken a turn for the worse instead of better. I mean I understand analog sticks are the chosen medium of choice these days but I have to say Sony is the only company that still makes d-pads worth a damn anymore.
The "fake analog" d-pad design with more than 4 directions is and always has been poorly thought out and never performs well. They need to go back to the idea that the d-pad should feel like different buttons, even if they're not.
Microsoft is "evil" to small to medium (and sometimes even larger) enterprises, but is largely indifferent to consumers. Sony is "evil" to consumers but is largely indifferent to small to medium enterprises. As a consumer, I find it morally difficult to do business with Microsoft but ultimately it doesn't hurt me (you say they "hurt consumers through various acts of evil" but I can't think of any beyond shoddy coding - okay, Vista aside), meanwhile I find it directly affects me to do business with Sony (rootkit fiasco, stripping out backwards compatability in PS3, removing OtherOS, pushing DRM tech etc). Of course neither company is really evil, just pursuing their goal of generating profit, but if we measure evil in this case as how much a company makes it difficult or even downright punishes me for giving them money, I'm currently far happier with MS than Sony. YMMV.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
R1/L1, R2/L2 has been around since the original PlayStation days. Plus the benefit of R1 being "fire" is that the way you grip it, it's like pulling an actual trigger. You don't need the smooth analog action of the R2/L2 buttons.
I don't know about the analog sticks being in the wrong place. I think that's just a matter of preference at this point.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I mean the one that was on the 6-button pad for the Genesis, the japanese Saturn pad, and on the Saturn analog controller. I mean that was easily my favorite d-pad and anyway Sega would probably sell it cheap anyway.
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