Xbox 360 wireless controller sensitivity

Hi Everyone,

I picked up an XBox 360 at a yard sale for $25... not a bad find! Works perfectly, but came with only a power cable (and a bunch of games.) I had to get a controller for it; bought it brand new from eBay. It appears to be a genuine Microsoft controller,
as best I can tell.

Anyway, the sensitivity of the right stick is just ridiculous! Aiming is a matter of too far one way, then too far the other way; it's almost impossible to achieve any kind of accuracy at all when trying to do things quickly, as in a combat situation.
I can get it to move very slowly and accurately, but only if I move the stick extremely slowly within a very small amount of stick throw.

There's this huge dead zone, maybe about a full third of the stick throw (in any one direction), then onscreen movement starts, and within a very small amount of throw it ramps up to full speed (whatever speed I set it for within the game.) The 'speed'
or 'sensitivity' is functional, and does control the 'full-throw- speed of the stick, but no matter where I set that speed, from minimum to maximum, the overall behavior of the stick is the same: lots of nothing, then an abrupt ramp-up from barely moving to
full-tilt in a very small amount of stick movement (maybe 10% of the throw, again in one direction, not total one side-to-other side), then the remaining throw is at full speed.

Pulling numbers out of thin air (no real way to measure this,) from neutral, pushing the stick to the left, say: about 40% of stick travel gets nothing, the next 15-20% ramps from very slow to full speed, and the remainder is just at whatever full-speed
is set for. Hope all this describes it accurately; it's easy to feel/see, not so easy to describe verbally!

So, after all that, my questions are:

1.) Is this 'normal' behavior for one of these controllers, and it's just a matter of having to suck it up and get used to it?

2.) Is there any way to expand the 'range of response,' spread it out across more of the throw, so it'd be more like 25% nothing, 50% slow-to-full, and then 25% full speed? Within 'software' or 'settings,' that is. If that makes any sense? That's how
the sticks on my PS4 controller behave... I just assumed the Xbox controller would be the same (or at least close).

3.) Can this be changed by physically modding the controller? Like, do I have analog sticks, and would changing them to digital sticks improve the situation (or, more likely, make it not work altogether....), or something along those lines.

It just this moment occurred to me that maybe I should be trying to adjust this setting within the Xbox's 'home screen,' somewhere in that menu, rather than trying to do it from within the game? That
would explain the 'faster-but-same-abrupt-ramping' behavior I have now.

I've long wanted to play some of the games that are 'xbox-only,' and this was such a good chance to do so, and on very short $$... and now this 'unusable-for-all-practical-purposes' controller issue... so any comments/suggestions would be very much appreciated.

:)

 

Analog stick sensitivity issues?

You could always check the game settings + XBL setting to make the sensitivity higher. My wireless controller has a somewhat "slow" sensitivity and my wired one seems to have insane sensitivity.

 

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

 

Gee, thanks for all the feedback. Must be a dead forum by now, with the release of Xbox One. I found my own answer... turns out that there's a 'global' sensitivity adjustment in the 'home screen' of the Xbox, as I suspected might be the case. This controller
is still weirdly over-sensitive in that most of the usable control is confined to a pretty small percentage of the total throw, but setting the sensitivity to "Low" does seem to increase this percentage to the point that with practice, I can get used to it.
In time. I thought of a way to visually represent how this stick behaves: 0000000000000000123456789101010101010101010101010, with all the leading "0's" being the 'dead zone' off of neutral, the "1-10" being the 'range of control, and the remaining "10's"
being the rest of the throw which does nothing after reaching full (onscreen) speed. As you can see, in order to use this thing smoothly, you have to 'pre-load' the stick to almost half-travel and hold it there as your new 'neutral,' (nice trick if you can
then find that same spot after moving it), then move the stick in very tiny increments to ramp from no movement to full movement(again, onscreen movement, not stick movement.) About 75 to 80% of the total available stick movement does nothing, with all the
response being concentrated within that remaining 20-25%. NOT a very good design... it needs either better/different hardware or greatly improved software coding. Maybe they managed to square that away with the new Xbox One... guess I'll find out when I
manage to find one of them at a yard sale, too.

 

Have you tried looking at the options in-game and turning the sensitivity way down? I haven't had issues with a very sensitive controller before so am not too sure. Also, look for a "deadzone" option in the game settings. The deadzone is what you are describing
with the having to move it a certain percent before it activates. This is different between games so maybe try picking up a different game and see if it feels better.

 

Hey DD666

Thanks for the reply! Yes, at least in the few games I've played on it so far, changing the in-game sensitivity affects only the top speed of the stick, from waaay fast to just fast-ish; it does nothing to expand the useable range of control, which is still
confined to that small percentage of total stick throw. Changing the sensitivity @ Xbox home screen seems to expand that range, but there's still a large dead lead-in area and an equally large trailing area of top speed, with the actual control being only
a narrow band right between the two. I've seen examples of this in various coding forums, discussing dead-spot implementation to compensate for stick wear, and not returning exactly to dead-center after lots of use... you don't want that slow drift with
no stick input, so the dead-zone is an answer to that. There are multiple ways to implement that, though, each with it's own behavioral characteristics... this looks like one of those less-than-ideal implementations. Too bad I can't get in there and alter
that part of the code... It's almost as if there's an audio taper pot in there, instead of a linear taper one (though the sticks are probably digital, and not actual pots as you generally think of them... never had one apart to see!)

I've so far not seen an option for dead-zone adjustment in the games I've tried. I've tried the original Halo (which was for the original Xbox, I realize) and Halo 2 (ditto), Then Halo Reach, which IS for Xbox 360.... and still has no useful sensitivity
setting, or any kind of dead zone setting... though I may have to go back and make sure of that, as I wasn't looking for it specifically, just hunting for anything that might affect the controllers response to input. I don't think it's there, but I've been
wrong before. I'll check some of the newer games and see if there's anything like that.

Thanks again!