I kind of feel like if you’re the sort of person who wants third-party controllers, you’re probably going to be happier playing games on the PC (or some equivalent, like the Steam Deck) than a console. The console is a closed system. For controllers, console vendors leverage that, don’t want people to cheat in multiplayer games, aren’t going to want to permit people to bring their own controllers (and Microsoft’s apparently cracking down on third-party controllers as well). That’s not necessarily a bad thing – if you want a level playing field between two people who aren’t physically co-located, it’s a hard problem for console vendors to solve, and so at least for multiplayer games, this is a legit route towards that – but it’s going to come with baggage like a limited controller selection.
The console’s strong point is that the console vendor and/or developer works on a particular system which is identical to all the other systems out there. Easier to debug and diagnose problems, gives everyone the same experience. There’s little end-user setup or troubleshooting. Those are real plusses, but achieving that inherently involves placing restrictions on the end user.
The PC’s strong point is that it’s an open system. One can modify the environment, produce a better experience with more money or the advance of technology or tweak to particular tastes, or mod games without restriction. If you’re partially-blind or have restricted hand movement or whatever, you can throw some macro software on the thing and use foot pedals or whatnot.
I see people complaining that a given console game doesn’t support N FPS or doesn’t let them modify some settings or doesn’t have some kind of hardware support due to the console vendor restricting what can be connected to the system, and I think “if that’s what I wanted, I’d probably just use a PC, rather than trying to fight it out with the console vendor, especially given that they have some not-unreasonable reasons for doing what they’re doing.”
I kind of feel like if you’re the sort of person who wants third-party controllers, you’re probably going to be happier playing games on the PC (or some equivalent, like the Steam Deck) than a console. The console is a closed system. For controllers, console vendors leverage that, don’t want people to cheat in multiplayer games, aren’t going to want to permit people to bring their own controllers (and Microsoft’s apparently cracking down on third-party controllers as well). That’s not necessarily a bad thing – if you want a level playing field between two people who aren’t physically co-located, it’s a hard problem for console vendors to solve, and so at least for multiplayer games, this is a legit route towards that – but it’s going to come with baggage like a limited controller selection.
The console’s strong point is that the console vendor and/or developer works on a particular system which is identical to all the other systems out there. Easier to debug and diagnose problems, gives everyone the same experience. There’s little end-user setup or troubleshooting. Those are real plusses, but achieving that inherently involves placing restrictions on the end user.
The PC’s strong point is that it’s an open system. One can modify the environment, produce a better experience with more money or the advance of technology or tweak to particular tastes, or mod games without restriction. If you’re partially-blind or have restricted hand movement or whatever, you can throw some macro software on the thing and use foot pedals or whatnot.
I see people complaining that a given console game doesn’t support N FPS or doesn’t let them modify some settings or doesn’t have some kind of hardware support due to the console vendor restricting what can be connected to the system, and I think “if that’s what I wanted, I’d probably just use a PC, rather than trying to fight it out with the console vendor, especially given that they have some not-unreasonable reasons for doing what they’re doing.”
Who the hell doesn’t want competition? 3rd party controllers are no different then the junk OEMs make