Most Popular PC Gamepad: The Xbox 360 Controller

When a keyboard and mouse isn't the best tool for the game you want to play, you have plenty of gamepad options to reach for. We asked you which ones you thought were the best, then looked at the five best PC gamepads and put them to a vote. Now we're back to highlight the winner. It shouldn't surprise anyone, but the Xbox 360 controller took the top spot by a wide margin. It brought in close to 61% of the vote on its own, and those of you who voted for it and praised it in the discussions pointed out that most modern games with support for PC gamepads are designed with this controller in mind. Plus, drivers are already rolled into Windows, you can get it working in OS X if you have to, and it even works well in old-school, emulated games. Just get the Deluxe version, many of you noted, the one with the transforming D-pad. In second place with 20% of the votes cast was the Sony DualShock 3 controller, which many of you preferred despite the debate around which third-party drivers were the best to use along with it under what operating system. Still, it's a great option, and works smoothly in OS X and Linux—perhaps moreso than it does in Windows. Rounding out the top three were Logitech's gaming controllers, namely the Rumblepad 2 (which many of you had fond memories of) and the newer F310 and F710. They picked up 8% of the vote. Behind them in fourth place were our array of retro USB gamepads, bringing in just shy of 6% of the vote. Many of you reported love for newly manufactured USB gamepads designed to look and work like old SNES, NES, and N64 controllers, and others pointed out that you don't need the USB versions of those gamepads if you pick up an adapter that lets you connect the original old school controller to a new PC via USB. We had plenty of links for you there, so make sure to go back to the original post if you're interested in those. Finally, bringing up the rear in fifth place with 5% of the vote was the Razer Sabertooth, a beautifully engineered gamepad that supports the Xbox 360 and Windows out of the box, sports backlit buttons, removable triggers on the bottom, programmable buttons, and even an OLED panel on the base that shows you what mode the controller is in.