Comment by 12_throw_away
4 hours ago
In my dream world, hardware enthusiasts would be constantly creating absolutely crazy game controllers with bizarre combinations of inputs that look nothing like an xbox 360 controller. There'd be a universal input protocol that would allow for self-describing gamepads with arbitrary numbers of digital buttons, analog sticks and triggers, touchpads, mouse inputs, haptics, gyro sensors, levers, sliders, wheels, etc. etc.
I realize this may not be practical, but it's kind of weird that PCs have been more or less stuck with a protocol designed for XBox 360 controllers for 2 decades now, while the locked-down console space is seeing much more experimentation and innovation around input. The original steam controller at least hinted at being sort of an open platform for this sort of thing, although it didn't really take off. Fingers crossed for the new version.
It's because the two-thumbstick, 8 face buttons, 2 shoulder and 2 trigger form factor covers so many games there's not been a real reason for super wacky controllers. They kind of hit it out of the park on the 360 design and the only real sticking point left is the exact ergonomics which mostly fall into the PS thumbstick position (both lower) vs XBox position (left high and right low).
One big reason would be that the 360 controller was when they first made it standard USB to connect, and introduced Xinput with the standard set of inputs for games to target. I expect most gamers wouldn't find it pleasant if they had to assign buttons and axis before the joypad would be active/useful, then hitting play and trying to remember what JOY_5 mapped to as used to be needed with directinput.
The Xbox controller doesn't even have a gyro. Xbox controller design is completely stagnant.
Gyro aiming being on all 3 console platforms would be such a huge boon, because then it could finally get implemented in every shooter. And they could start heavily nerfing the frankly ridiculous aim assist that controllers currently get.
Back buttons would be another nice one. Right now there's just 2-4 buttons too few on controllers, and it often leads to strange button mappings that either shift with context or require multi-button activations, which gets even more annoying if you have to do it during, say, a jump.
3 replies →
USB HID actually works pretty much how you describe, for instance a Physical Descriptor can contain metadata about which body part a button/control is supposed to be used with.
It's extremely complicated however (like many things USB), which is probably why everything just emulates an XBox 360 controller like you said.