Xbox 360 wireless controller practically unuseable.

Having problems using an Xbox 360 wireless controller. Brand new. Connects fine, all functions work... but those stupid sticks! Really, the response from these things is foolishly hypersensitive.

The problem is difficult to describe in text... it's like ALL the useable response is concentrated in a very small portion of the total available stick-throw, near the center of travel. Move the stick VERY slowly, and nothing... nothing.... nothing... then,
abruptly, things happen, and as you continue to push the stick, the response maxes out, then there's the rest of the throw, which produces no further increase in response. It's a lot easier to represent it graphically. The leading and trailing zeros indicate
stick throw where nothing is happening, and the 1-10 is the portion of stick throw that actually produces movement on-screen.

000000000000000000001234567891000000000000000000000

As you can see, all the useable part of the stick throw is concentrated in a very small part of the total stick throw. This makes it all but impossible to use these things with any kind of accuracy at all. I literally have to "pre-load" the stick by pushing
(or pulling) it about halfway, then holding it there as a "starting point," then barely advancing the stick to produce acontrolled response, and it's really easy (in fact, almost impossible to avoid ) to overshoot the response I'm
looking for, all the way to maximum speed and into the 'trailing zero' zone of 'no further response.' The end result of all this is that I wind up hopelessly overshooting/undershooting past the target, left-right-left-right... or up-down-up-down... , and
can't 'sneak up' on the target until the reticle is right there to squeeze off a shot.

That's about the best I can do to describe the issue... it's instantly obvious when you use the thing that accurate control is extremely difficult to achieve. You
can achieve accuracy, but to do so I have to move the stick so slowly, to avoid the 'overshoot,' that I'm pretty much dead before I can get off a shot (that hits anything, that is....)

I have already tried, both in the settings menu from the home-page area, and also in-game, to reduce the sensitivity of the controller. All this does, though, is slow down the rate at which the response occurs... all the response isstill
concentrated in that very small portion of total throw.

The way this thing ought to work is to have a small leading and trailing 'dead zone,' where nothing happens, then have that response spread out over the total throw, so almost all of the throw produces some kind of response...

000000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 00000

See the difference? In the first example, all the response is concentrated in the center 20% (approximately) of the total stick throw... and in the second example, the response is spread out across almost all of the stick throw, with leading and trailing
'dead-zone' buffers to compensate for 'stick-drift' occurring from time/use.

If we were talking potentiometers (like a volume knob) here (and we are, actually,) I would say that the pots in this thing are audio taper, when they should be linear taper. Getting kinda technical here, I know... but that describes the problem more accurately
than anything else I can come up with. An audio taper has a logarithmic response (ramps up really quickly) so a relatively small amount of knob rotation results in a rapid increase in volume. A linear pot, in this same situation, would require many, many
turns to produce the same amount of volume increase.

Is there some kind of setting that I've managed to overlook that would remedy this problem? Or maybe somebody has a source for linear digital pots that I can switch these things out for? Or a contact link to a Microsoft game-design staffer that I can bounce
this question off of? Getting ahold of Microsoft directly is something I haven't yet been able to achieve, not via internet, anyway (by far my preferred method of communication... I dislike phone conversations for reasons I really can't go into in this forum,
and I despise chat.)

Anyway, any ideas that might fix this useability issue would be greatly appreciated. There's a lot of games I like to play or would like to play that are available only on Xbox (I have the PC port of some of them.) I found the Xbox 360 at a yard sale,
and picked it up for $20... I'd have been nuts to pass it up; it enabled me to expand my 'game horizons' at an incredible price point. I also have a PS4, and the sticks on that, while still a bit too sensitive for my tastes, are still far more controllable
than the ones in the Xbox controller. I don't want to get into comparisons of Xbox 360 -vs- PS4... the PS4 is much newer, and I'm sure the Xbox One has improved controller response to keep on a par with PS4, but that doesn't really help with this issue.

Long post, I know, and thanks for reading it, anyway.

:)

 

Did MS design Xbox without this key feature the 360 had?

You hate the design of the Xbox One controller? So shouldn't you hate the design of the 360 controller too since it's practically the exact same?

 

Would there be a xbox one controller for the 360?

First of all, why in the world would you even want an Xbox ONE controller for the 360? It's the same exact thing, just with a different D-Pad and slightly more sensitive Joysticks. The button placement is practically the exact same with a teeny, tiny difference from the triggers. Second, I highly doubt they are going to make an Xbox One Controller specifically for the 360 since that's just a retarded idea. A third party company might make one like they did a 360 controller for the PS3, but I doubt it. However, for those wanting to try it, and wanting to see if it'll work for PC Games, apparently all it takes is a Micro USB cable to turn off the "Wireless" function and make it act as a normal wired one would.

Xbox ONE Controller is Wireless and Wired

 

Hi! So just to be clear: Is the controller brand new as stated in the beginning or did it came with the Xbox 360 you bought at a yard sale? If it's the latter I would first check if the controller isn't working properly as I never had this issue with my
gamepads that came with the Xbox 360.

Also, did you test this with different games?

 

Ahhh, precision in communication!

Thanks dzs MeCH,

Controller is brand-new. Xbox at yard sale had no controllers (they kept the controllers when they upgraded to Xbox One.)

The problem is identical with any game I've tried; I've tried probably 20 games or so, from Halo on up. The original Xbox games have minor video artifacts (rastering white dots), but play fine otherwise.

Granted, the controller is from eBay... I did my best to exercise due diligence to not obtain some cheap knock-off, but maybe I scr3wed myself. I've searched for genuine -vs- counterfeit controllers, and this one pretty much meets
the alleged requirements for a genuine Microsoft controller, but it's all heresay, more or less; nothing absolutely definitive (still looking for that....)

 

Hey there Kharrisma!

I'm sorry to hear about any issues you may be having with the Xbox 360 wireless controller. Here is a good troubleshooting guide to help

assist troubleshooting the controller.

If you want a higher response rate time when clicking or using the thumbstick, I would recommend a wired controller or connect a USB if available.

Let us know if this helps.

 

Hi XBF Crystal,

Yeah, none of the issues in that article are anywhere close to the problem I'm experiencing, but thanks for the link anyway.

As I see it, the response time is already much too quick as it is, and all of it concentrated in one small area near the middle of the stick throw. Dialing down the sensitivity in-game or from the home menu settings don't affect this characteristic. The
overall response is slower, true, but it's still all concentrated in a very small portion of the available throw, making it extremely difficult to exercise any accuracy or controllability. I'm getting ready to take this foolish thing apart to get the numbers
off of the pot, and do some online research to see if there's a version of the same pot with a different taper. This just
can't be the way these things were designed to work (I hope...)

 

Hello Kharrisma,

After further investigation, settings on the console for the controller or through any game in general would not be the cause/fix for the joystick drifting in one direction.

There are several unorthodox fixes available to fix the drifting or uncontrollable movement of the stick, but in most situations it is best to replace the controller.

The Reddit Xbox 360 Community is invested into these discussions about the more unorthodox methods of going about the issue, but this would be our best suggestions
involving the controller.

 

Hey XBF Javier R,

I don't believe I mentioned a word about stick-drift. I know what stick-drift is, and I'm not having an issue with it. The stick is tight (tracking-wise, not physically) and stays exactly where it's put (onscreen) when released, and always returns to exact
center (physically.) It's "tight." The problem here is that virtually ALL of the stick's onscreen response is contained within a very small area of total stick throw, right about in the center, instead of being spread out over a much wider amount of stick
throw, which would make it much more useable/controllable. See the graphical representation of this problem in the original post... I'll duplicate it here for convenience:

Stick response now:

center 0000000000000000001234567898000000000000000000 hard stop

where "0" is no onscreen movement, and 123456789 is the range of throw that produces onscreen response. As you can plainly see, all useable response is jammed into a small area in the middle of the throw (from center/rest position to hard-stop.) If you
want to hit "3" and hold it, good luck with a stick response profile that acts like this!

A far more useable/controllable response profile would look like:

cenrter 000000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 00000 hard stop

Again, it's plainly apparent that all the stick's onscreen response is spread across almost all of the available throw, from center to hard stop, making for a much greater degree of control. If you want to hit "3," it's easy to find and hold in a more
gradual response spread. This is why I think that there must be a logarithmic (or audio) taper pot in here, instead of a linear taper, because this is exactly the difference between an audio (logarithmic) pot and a linear pot. I really think that this thing
was built using the wrong component.