So for the past couple of years (… coming on a decade?) I’ve liked the 8bitdo controllers a lot. Build consistency is a bit of a shitshow but you can tell almost instantly if you have one of the bad ones (and it is usually a matter of just loosening one screw unless the PCB itself is cracked). And the Ultimate Pro Whatever The Hell With Charging Dock is really nice and I love that I never have to worry about my controller needing new batteries when I am on my PC. In theory I can just plug it in but that gets into a mess with games that auto-detect what is connected and so forth. The charging dock that doubles as a receiver is delightful.

But when I switched to linux for fulltime gaming a while back… things got messier. 8bitdo has no linux support whatsoever. Mostly that is “fine” because the controller is a controller and I can use a phone app when I want to change what the rear buttons do. But I can’t update firmwares. Which, again, is “fine” except I finally wanted to get back into Crosscode and have learned that shitshow of an html5 engine ONLY supports xinput on PC and apparently the functionality to tell the 8bitdo to present as an xinput might only be in a beta firmware? So all the joys of debugging but with very non-technical resources on google.

Not the end of the world (was mostly planning to moonlight to my xbox anyway) but kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back as it were. Because Crosscode is a mess of a game technically that even the devs acknowledge was a mistake (AMAZING experience though) but what happens the next time I run up into a corner case? Not ready to throw this in the bin and rage purchase a new gamepad but very much ready to start browsing what my options are. Especially as (some) third parties are actually pretty good these days.

So what gamepads do you folk use?

  • tuckerm
    2•3 months ago

    I’ve been using a PS5 controller lately. I’m on Windows, but I think it works on Linux. I also launch every game through Steam, which handles compatibility issues well.

    The Steam controller is my favorite, but I wanted something that I could buy replacements for, so I started using a PS5 controller. The touchbar is not really useful (hard to reach and pretty imprecise), but it does have a gyro for aiming in FPS games. And I play a few racing games, so I wanted analog triggers, which the Switch controllers don’t have.

    I bought an upgraded one from aimcontrollers.com, just to get some clicky microswitches on the d-pad, face buttons, and shoulder buttons. I hate how much I paid for it, but I do love some clicky buttons. Having looked at their site just now when posting this, apparently they now offer hall effect joysticks, too. So I might need another one. 😬

    edit: Just realized that this was posted in linux_gaming. Well, I’m still pretty sure that PS5 controllers work on Linux. And I’ll be switching soon anyway, since my perfectly good PC doesn’t meet the requirements for Windows 11.