I guess I'm about a decade late with this, but... why do people dislike the Xbox 360 controller D-pad?

[cowuponacow]

This is an honest question, because I honestly have not been able to figure it out. The amount of dissatisfaction is incredible. It's so consistent, it's taken for granted.

I've never owned a 360, but I've used the same wired 360 controller on my PC for about four years now. I use it for everything you could reasonably use a controller for, including Super Meat Boy, Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and a couple of retro games via emulators. Before I had this controller, I used an original Xbox Controller S with a homemade USB adapter and 3rd party drivers. I absolutely love my 360 controller and, other than some tentative yearning for the Steam controller, have never felt the desire to replace it.

There are basically three arguments I've heard against the 360's D-pad:

 

1. It's unresponsive.

 

I simply have never experienced this. Is mine unique?

 

2. The internal parts are constructed in irregular ways.

 

This may be true, but does not affect my use of the controller.

 

3. It's too easy to hit diagonals.

 

I have always considered this to be a great advantage of Xbox D-pads. They're the only D-pads I've used where diagonals are just as easy to hit as cardinal directions. I compare it especially with Playstation controllers, on which you effectively have to hit two buttons simultaneously if you want to input a diagonal.

[SecretAsianMan]

Let me ask you this: have you ever used a Nintendo d-pad?  Is the Xbox d-pad your first of this kind?

[coaxmetal]

My main issue with is "the diagonals are too easy to hit" but phrasing it that way doesn't really indicate what the issue is. It is really that the pad often registers a diagonal when my intent was not a diagonal. With a straight cross-shaped dpad, it is much easier to give precise inputs exactly as you intend. This is particularly important for demanding platformers and for fighting games. The 360 controller's dpad is on a rocker and, when simply resting your thumb on it to use, as is presumably intended, it can easily lead to unintentional, or incorrect inputs. That isn't to say that it is impossible to use for things like platformers (though it is quite hard for fighting games) but it takes more getting used to than the dpads used by nintendo or sony

[cowuponacow]

I own...

 

Nintendo 64 standard controller

Nintendo GameCube Wavebird

Nintendo Wii Remote

PlayStation DualShock 2 (used on PC via adapter)

Original Xbox Big-Giant-Huge Controller

Origianl Xbox Controller S

Xbox 360 wired controller

Various horrible off-brand controllers

 

I also have used a friend's NES for several Tetris marathons (yayyy Tetris)

[Professor Video Games]

Number three forever. It's not that it's too easy to hit diagonals, it's that it's too hard to not hit them. I've wobbled off the cardinal directions too many times to count and it's infuriating.

[cowuponacow]

coaxmetal and spork armada: Are you saying that you have trouble feeling the direction on the 360 D-pad? Or that the D-pad seems to mechanically favor diagonals to cardinals (e.g., you press on the downward bit of the D-pad and the plastic slips into one of the diagonal positions)? Or that the D-pad seems to electronically favor diagonals to cardinals (e.g., you press on the downward bit of the D-pad, and the plastic moves in the correct direction, but the controller nevertheless inputs a diagonal)?

[tegan]

Nintendo 64 standard controller

Nintendo GameCube Wavebird

Nintendo Wii Remote

 

Not trying to start anything here, but these are three of the worst implementations of some of the best d-pads.

 

 

 

(teg's favourite d-pads: Wii U Gamepad, Wii U Pro Controller, PS Vita, Gameboy Micro)

[Professor Video Games]

coaxmetal and spork armada: Are you saying that you have trouble feeling the direction on the 360 D-pad? Or that the D-pad seems to mechanically favor diagonals to cardinals (e.g., you press on the downward bit of the D-pad and the plastic slips into one of the diagonal positions)? Or that the D-pad seems to electronically favor diagonals to cardinals (e.g., you press on the downward bit of the D-pad, and the plastic moves in the correct direction, but the controller nevertheless inputs a diagonal)?

 

mechanically

[coaxmetal]

mechanically

 

yup. 

[Syd]

It's difficult to control a character in a 2D game with it for the reasons that have already been stated above. It feels like it was made with weapon selection wheels in mind. I've tried playing precision platformers with the 360's d-pad and it just sent me running and screaming back to the analog stick or a different controller.

 

I've been considering buying a modkit for my 360 controller that would replace the d-pad with something more accurate.

[syntheticgerbil]

I honestly don't consider it a proper d-pad if you can mush the diagonals as a separate button. I feel like the purpose of a direction pad is to have an outlined up, down, left, and right, and you push two together if you need a diagonal. The way the 360's d-pad is set up makes it almost function like an analog stick. But you already have an analog stick, two of them, so why put another? To me the way the 360's d-pad is made is very much like a shitty catch all like this 90s piece of crap:

 

So I play PC and Xbawks with this instead. (Apparently it's official with Microsoft?)

[coaxmetal]

I honestly don't consider it a proper d-pad if you can mush the diagonals as a separate button. I feel like the purpose of a direction pad is to have an outlined up, down, left, and right, and you push two together if you need a diagonal. The way the 360's d-pad is set up makes it almost function like an analog stick. But you already have an analog stick, two of them, so why put another? To me the way the 360's d-pad is made is very much like a shitty catch all like this 90s piece of crap:

 

So I play PC and Xbawks with this instead. (Apparently it's official with Microsoft?)

 

whoah what is that?

[Latrine]

Yeah, accidentally pressing a diagonal instead of a cardinal direction is really frustrating. In Dark Souls I often remove my shield (Left) when I try to switch items (Down) and this can easily result in my death. My hand isn't that big so I find my thumb naturally rests on the bottom left of the down direction groove when holding the controller which makes this problem more common.

 

Also I dislike how even after you get the cardinal direction right, if your thumb wiggles just a little bit then you're suddenly inputting a diagonal. When trying to play Spelunky with the D-pad I would often be running in one direction and then suddenly start crawling on the ground. Or I'd be pressing down to look below an edge then suddenly start crawling off of it. 

[melmer]

[syntheticgerbil]

whoah what is that?

It's the older Hori Pad, but it appears you can't purchase it anymore. You can do turbo button sequence command stuff and cheat as well as adjust the analog sensitivity, but mostly I just like how it feels. It's very solid and sometimes the RB and LB on the sides feel better for some games.

[TheLastBaron]

Anyone here use one of the newer 360 controllers with the different dpad that you can twist and it turns from a circle to an actual plus sign?

[cowuponacow]

Social Justice Barbarian: People often bring up that Sega controller in discussions of best D-pads, which is curious to me, since it looks so much like the 360's D-pad.

 

I honestly don't consider it a proper d-pad if you can mush the diagonals as a separate button. I feel like the purpose of a direction pad is to have an outlined up, down, left, and right, and you push two together if you need a diagonal.

 

I guess I don't see why diagonals should be any more cumbersome to push than cardinals. I feel like the purpose of a D-pad is to give you exactly eight inputs, any one of which can be pressed at any given moment.

 

Anyway — obviously I'm not going to try to disagree with anyone's subjective experiences, nor does this issue have any particular significance. I'm just fascinated that my experience is so abnormal. For instance, I've played at least a hundred hours of Spelunky, all with the 360 D-pad, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've had an accidental diagonal.

[Architecture]

It's a mushy, imprecise d-pad that mars an otherwise excellent controller.

 

I'm actually quite tempted to get one of the new controllers, and I'm leaning toward Xbox One.

[Bjorn]

Anyone here use one of the newer 360 controllers with the different dpad that you can twist and it turns from a circle to an actual plus sign?

 

I had one for awhile, it was an improvement, but not significantly.  Basically a functional gimmick.  Unfortunately that controller broke quite quickly (the left shoulder failed after just a few months), and I wasn't impressed enough to buy another one. 

[Merus]

I guess I don't see why diagonals should be any more cumbersome to push than cardinals. 

 

Usually a diagonal up/down is treated in many games as both an up/down and a left/right. You can imagine how cumbersome it would be to accidentally and frequently push down instead of right.

 

Basically cardinals are much more important than diagonals.

[Griddlelol]

 

Best d-pad in the business. Note the complete lack of diagonals - which are entirely pointless.

 

New page! This d-pad deserves it.

[Thrik]

It's the diagonals for me too. I consider myself pretty accurate with my fingers and they're not particularly big either, but with the 360 I frequently find myself very frustrated with games where the d-pad is used for actions (i.e. not directional movement) and diagonal movement is rounded to the closest direction. Maybe there's a software factor at play too, but whatever the case it's shit and annoying.

 

Really, to me it's quite a straightforward concept that a d-pad should emphasise a lack of directional ambiguity, and indeed virtually every d-pad ever designed has adhered to this four-direction approach. In fact, I have no idea what the mechanics are but the 360's d-pad does feel an awful lot like an analogue stick with a flat, wide top so you can't move it as far. It just doesn't do what d-pads are specifically good at very well.

[cowuponacow]

syntheticgerbil, Merus, Griddlelol, and Thrik, regarding emphasizing cardinals over diagonals: what about games where diagonals are exactly as important as cardinals? I'm thinking of games like The Binding of Isaac, Jamestown, and 2D Zelda titles.

[Thrik]

Generally speaking, games make use of the combination of two directions being pressed at once to produce the diagonal action. In practice this is trivial to do and avoids the 360's weakness of it's stick-like d-pad allowing for ambiguous input where it's not entirely clear what the user was going for.

[Nappi]

I only use the XBOX D-pad in games where it is used to change a weapon or select an item or perform similar inventory type things, and the D-pad is absolutely horrible for that purpose.