Xbox Wireless Receiver
I recently had the chance to review the Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for PCs. In case you’re not aware of it, it’s a small device at the end of a USB cable that allows you to use any Xbox 360 wireless controller with your PC. I like the Xbox 360’s controller - it looks like Microsoft learned from its mistake with the Xbox’s terrible behemoth of a controller - and it is nice to be able to use it with your PC games. It also lets you use any wireless steering wheels or other special controllers for the Xbox 360 on your PC.
Several things struck me as strange about the receiver, though, and I’m not sure if they were just oversights or conscious decisions on Microsoft’s part for some obscure and nefarious reason. The first and most glaring is the like of included Vista drivers. With Microsoft’s push towards Vista-only PC gaming this is a pretty amazing gaff and I have to chalk this one up to poor management. You’d think Vista drivers would have been developed for it well in advance and included on the disk in the package, but instead Vista owners are forced to go to the Microsoft site and hunt down the drivers on their own.
The next oddity is that no game profiling software ships with the device. This means that if the game you want to play doesn’t support a gamepad you’ll have to hunt down some third party software to map the controls to keyboard strokes. It also means that even with games with gamepad support you may be forced to spend some time in the configuration screen mapping buttons. This seems to be something that may be more of a deliberate oversight by Microsoft. Since Vista only games like Halo 2 recognize an Xbox 360 controller and instantly map the buttons for you, Microsoft is probably pushing developers to include this support in their Vista games and providing incentive for PC gamers to start investing in Xbox 360 peripherals.
Lastly we have the little issue with recharging the Xbox 360 wireless controller. The rechargeable battery pack relies on a USB cable for charging, but when you plug this cable into a PC it won’t recognize the controller. You’d think that the drivers would at least recognize that you are trying to charge your controller and just let you go about your business, but instead every time you charge the controller you need to let the PC know that you don’t want to install any drivers. I’m not sure where to file this one. It seems pretty incredible that no one at Microsoft thought about gamers actually wanting to charge their wireless controllers, but it’s also hard to think of a reason why they wouldn’t want to make the recharging process more seamless. I’m sure that someone has a good conspiracy theory about this one though…
