I consider the best controller for any video game system to be the excellent Nintendo Wavebird for Nintendo’s GameCube. The controller is light, accurate, responsive, comfortable to use for extended play sessions and the only thing I (rarely) missed is the lack of rumble.

Today I had a quick feel of the controllers for the soon-to-be-released Xbox360 from Microsoft. The controllers were tethered to a demo system, but a wireless controller is available as long as you don’t buy the cheapskate version of the system.

I obviously can’t comment on the wireless aspect, but the controller was smaller than I expected and felt quite nice to hold. The responsiveness seems OK and I think I would need more time with it to determine if I’d consider the controller a Wavebird-beater but it could possibly do so.

The only reason I’m writing this is because the three controllers I’ve used for the original Xbox system are so awful in comparison that it’s great to see Microsoft making steps in the right direction, in regards to usability.

Project Gotham 3 looked quite nice, but it was still Project Gotham, which I don’t find really exciting.