Should I give in and get a gamepad for my PC?

OMG are you me??


I think the XBone controller is the best ergonomically, and it natively supports X-input which is what most PC games are using (basically the X360's gamepad). The huge downside IMO is the fact that it uses AA batteries which the gamepad does not charge even though it connects to a USB port.
If that bothers you (i.e. you don't want to produce chemical waste in the form of depleted batteries, or use rechargeable batteries that take 30 hours to recharge), then I suggest you go with something else.
There's a rechargeable battery pack for the xbone controller(sold separately). It recharges via usb. So you can plug in and keep playing while you recharge.
 
Is my gamepad going to explode because I've got *alkaline AA's in there while it's connected to the PC.
 
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There's a rechargeable battery pack for the xbone controller(sold separately). It recharges via usb. So you can plug in and keep playing while you recharge.
Interesting.
How much does it cost and how large are the batteries? Could be a nice purchase for this black friday.

Though if you want to play wired and charge the battery pack you'll need two cables at the same time, right?
 
The official play-and-charge kit lasts between 30 and 40 hours of gaming, depending on how much vibration/force-feedback is used.

No. Single cable. Does both, sends data and power to charge.
 
Do you play xp era games?
dont get an xbox controller they dont play nice with direct input games
logitec and others do pads that have a dinput/xinput switch
 
The official play-and-charge kit lasts between 30 and 40 hours of gaming, depending on how much vibration/force-feedback is used.

No. Single cable. Does both, sends data and power to charge.
How is this not default?!
 
Yeah if there's ever an opportunity to break up your product into multiple parts for more profit then they'll take it. Of course the excuse would be that the base product is cheaper and it gives the consumer choice.
 
It costs $6 to make and $20 to buy? Kerching!

Which oddly enough has saved me some money. My Halo Reach controllers are still going strong, the battery packs however, I've had to replace twice as the battery started to hold less charge. Certainly cheaper than buying new controllers though.

The other nice thing with the Play & Charge kit is that the cord connection is on the kit rather than on the controller. I never knew how nice this was until some of my friends went through multiple PS4 controllers because Sony did a crappy job with soldering on the micro-USB port. Eventually their controllers would just either stop charging or just constantly lose USB connection with their PS4s because that micro-USB port would become loose and unsoldered after either plugging in and unplugging the cable so many times or just by leaving the cable connected (I guess the wiggling of the controller during play was enough to ruin it).

Regards,
SB
 
Which oddly enough has saved me some money. My Halo Reach controllers are still going strong, the battery packs however, I've had to replace twice as the battery started to hold less charge.
You had to buy new battery packs? Exactly how much less charge did they hold?

The play & charge kit holds 1500mAh batteries that advertise up to 30h of gameplay. Let's be conservative here and with rumble etc. they give you ~20h on a single charge.
According to Panasonic, lithium batteries have a typical degradation to 70% of original capacity after 500 cycles.
70% of 20 hours is still 16 hours which is still a lot. And after 500 cycles with say an average of 16 hours of capacity (again, being conservative here) you should be getting around 500*16 = 8000 hours per battery pack. With the two battery packs you say you replaced, you'd get 16 000 hours of gameplay out of the two battery packs you replaced.

16 000 hours of gameplay means you'd have to be playing more than 7 hours every single day since the Xbox One released 6 years ago. And this is assuming you're replacing your battery packs when they reach 70% capacity which honestly is still a pretty high capacity.

So either a) microsoft's battery pack is made with incredibly shitty battery quality, b) they're blatantly lying on how long the battery lasts and it's only like 3 hours or c) you really need to spend time on something other than playing games on that gamepad which is probably made of titanium alloys to widtstand >16k hours of wear through their moving parts.




The same goes for all the people (which I strangely only ever hear of in this forum and from Xbox owners to be honest) who complain their DS4s get useless because their batteries lose all their capacity and they need to replace their gamepad and spend lots of money on it.
Honestly, simple math says those people should worry a lot more about finding occupations other than draining their gamepads' batteries well before worrying about the money they need to spend on gamepads.


some of my friends went through multiple PS4 controllers because Sony did a crappy job with soldering on the micro-USB port. Eventually their controllers would just either stop charging or just constantly lose USB connection with their PS4s because that micro-USB port would become loose and unsoldered after either plugging in and unplugging the cable so many times or just by leaving the cable connected (I guess the wiggling of the controller during play was enough to ruin it).

I have 4x DS4 controllers. I also have 3 friends with 2x DS4 controllers and another 2 friends with 4x DS4 controllers.
Out of a total of 18 DS4 total, one of them went through RMA because the rubber in the analog sticks started to come out.
That's the grand total of issues for which I have anecdotal evidence on DS4 controllers. Zero issues with mine.

And according to your claims, at least 2 friends of yours have replaced at least 2 DS4 controllers, making it a minimum of 4x DS4 controllers that were defective.
Either you know a ton of people with PS4 and DS4 controllers, or your use of plural here seems be somewhat strange to me.
That or maybe the DS4 controllers being sold in the US are just made of a much lower quality than those being sold in Europe.
 
And according to your claims, at least 2 friends of yours have replaced at least 2 DS4 controllers, making it a minimum of 4x DS4 controllers that were defective.
Either you know a ton of people with PS4 and DS4 controllers, or your use of plural here seems be somewhat strange to me.
That or maybe the DS4 controllers being sold in the US are just made of a much lower quality than those being sold in Europe.

Yup. Maybe your friends don't play games much on the PS4 or use their DS4 with their PC. /shrug.

It's not isolated to my friends either. Multiple streamers have had to buy multiple DS4s as well due to the problem with the micro-usb connector on the controllers. Strippin had one start going out on him when playing MK11 and another with Street Fighter V, for example. OMG did it piss him off so much since it caused him to lose some matches. He uses his DS4 controllers on both his console and PC.

Regards,
SB
 
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or just get an external batter charger and some rechargeable batteries

Yup I love user replaceable rechargeable batteries. I really hated it when Logitech switched from using rechargeable AA batteries in their rechargeable mice to non-replaceable battery packs in their mice. Sucks hard. My original MX Revolution from 2006 is still useable wireless because of this.

My MX Master from 2015 already is showing unacceptable battery charge and it was purchased in 2015!

God, I hate non-replaceable batteries. Thank god my MX Nano recharges the battery through the mousepad. So even when the battery gets to an unacceptable level, I won't notice as the battery is constantly being charged.

Regards,
SB
 
I use PS2 controllers on PC, bought some cheap USB adapter to make this work. I need them to play Super Mario clone with my wife, which works fine.

But it does not work for games like Cuphead or A Way Out. It seems only XBox controllers are supported? How stupid. I would expect more from Unity, UE and MS here! :mad:

There may be a hacky workaround, but i'm too lazy to search for this and set it up. So i recommend XB pads to avoid issues.
 
Should I give in and get a gamepad for my PC?

Yes. Then give in a step further and get a console to go with your gamepad.

Most own a console besides their pc and vice versa. Maybe not with the right controller to accompany the pc though depending on what console you own. Both ds4 and xone controllers are basically plug & play though.
 
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