Controller emulators for consoles are popular among mouse & keyboard players, but they also convey an unfair advantage.
First-person shooters may have originated on the PC, but for many years they’ve been most-played on game consoles. PC gamers typically use their mouse and keyboard to play the games, while console gamers are expected to use the standard controller the system ships with. Playing FPS games on a gamepad is sub-optimal, as the analog stick is a relative input device, and modern games ship with many technologies to assist players using pads.
Some console games have official support for mouse and keyboard input. Usually, that includes separate queues for pad players and keyboard players, or some other option to allow folks twiddling sticks to be set apart from the ones wrangling a mouse. However, certain unscrupulous fellows use specialized devices to jump into what are supposed to be controller-only games using a mouse and keyboard.
This isn’t actually a new phenomenon. Devices like the XIM Apex and Cronus Zen (pictured above) have existed for quite some time; your author recalls hearing about them in the Xbox 360’s heyday of the late 2000s. However, gamers have grown fed up with trick-shotting mouse players in their console games, and both Activision and Ubisoft have decided to take action.
