I just got a 360 controller for my PC for racing games and such. As I was looking around the internet, I ran into this.
As it turns out, with Microsoft’s “new” ‘games for windows’ campaign, every game released has to make use of certain hardware, or at least be able to use it.
For example, they HAVE to support widescreen… and they also have to support the Xbox360 controller natively (so, for example, a game that was out for xbox 360, and ported for windows, or vice versa, will use the exact same controls as the 360 version as long as you’re using the 360 controller). So essentially programmers/developers now have a common PC game input device to program for, instead of the hundreds of combinations that could of existed previously. Most of them being pretty shitty controllers anyway
Thats means that we could see a lot more cross platform gaming, as long as the 360 controller is required on the PC to make it fair for the 360 people.
Currently, you can play Halo 2 and Shadowrun with PC people and Xbox people alike. Also included in LIVE for windows, is all the stuff that makes the Xbox unique (achievements, chat, mini games, ect)
just a heads up for those that didn’t know about it
Maybe you should stop buying toys and put some damn snows on your GTO before you wreck it.
On topic, not sure how I feel about opening up 360 live to PC people. It’s much harder to use cheats on the 360 so you’re not constantly dealing with various aimbot bitches like you do in the PC world.
with the luck I’ve had with this car, I could only hope for a resolution like that
and I agree with the whole cheating thing, but I have a feeling that it would do some checks on the game being played before letting it run on the live network (sort of like how the 360 does).
only time will tell though. Hopefully we’ll see some more integration this coming year. Even if not, it’s nice to know that devs are making PC games with the 360 controller in mind
Fuck that shit, use the proper controller for the game.
keyboard and mouse for FPS or RTS
wheel and pedals for driving
flight stick for flight sim
No need to cut off a leg so just you can compete in the special olympics…
I’m all for the cross platform competition if we aren’t forced to use a junk controller. It’ll teach the console kids where they’ve been going wrong all this time.
You don’t have to use a 360 controller, the game just has to have support for it. I think it’s great, plus with the wireless reciever you can use ANY 360 wireless peripheral on your PC - headset, racing wheel, etc. Pretty sweet to only have to buy one set…
werd, I don’t think you’d actually need to. I was messing around with it and it’s pretty cool actually. I own a few “games for windows” games and tried them with the 360 controller. Recognized it right away… didn’t have to fuck around with configuring it as they already have a solid config built in and it labels all the buttons correctly in game (ex, no “button 1, 2, 3” ect… now it’s “button A, B, X, Y” ect)
In fact, Bioshock under this mode uses xbox 360 style menus and such to make it easier to use the controller (layout is identical to the 360 version as well). Granted, controllers generally suck for FPS’s, but this controller worked very well in Bioshock and Crysis. Also works for windows built in games.
The only disadvantage I found so far is that it doesn’t work so well with games that don’t use xinput, but there are ways around that. This will be great for NHL 08
