Adam Thole, a Junior pursuing a EE/CE degree at Perdue, has put together a Xbox 360 Tilt Controller mod using a two-axis accelerometer and a Digital-to-Analog Converter to send the inputs to the left analog stick. The mod is an impressive piece of engineering/hackery with video to boot.

While this seems to make the Xbox 360 controller even better that the Sixaxis ( Sony's controller is missing rumble ) it misses the whole Wiimote by a long shot. The Wiimote doesn't replace existing functionality, it creates a whole new control scheme. Friends of mine who are not gamers by any stretch of the imagination come over quite often to play the Wii. During one session one of them made a very acute observation. Traditional game playing is less hand-eye coordination that thumb-eye coordination. While they struggle with the control scheme of Gears of War and NBA Live the Wii's controls are immediately understood.

Just like the d-pad has the era of the dual analog controls come and gone?

Unless it's officially supported with game software, it's not going to be fully utilized. (It works with regular software, but games specially designed to use such controls are even better.) Sounds like a good start, and something to possibly look forward to for 360 users. :)

I'd say that the d-pad days were due to die off, but for one problem: they're still bloody useful to the people that grew up gaming with them. I play Tony Hawk's Underground 2 on my PS2 a lot, and I'd be unable to perform some tricks without that pesky d-pad. I find that the analog stick works just fine for most things, but the d-pad offers a level of precision that's just unbeatable... And I think that is true of a lot of games.

I think d-pads will always be a sign of a hard-core gaming system.

I agree it is difficult to have some of the precision of the d-pad with the analog stick.

Wow, it looked like it worked really well with the racing game.

I can only imagine the aftermarket pad mods for use with games where the analog really doesn't come into play, when/if someone tries to dump the D-Pad completely. It'll be some round d-pad sitting atop four tiny microswitches and all the kiddies will be saying, "It's great, but it sounds like I'm having a seizure while clicking my mouse."

There was a module that plugged into the memory/rumble port on the N64 that was supposed to do the same thing, but I never got to try one. I wonder if it's a similar circuit that can be hacked into other pads.