Unplugged: Testing The Xbox Wireless Adapter For Windows

[heirdeux]

Microsoft released a USB dongle so you can have a wireless connection for your Xbox One controller on the PC. However, you do need Windows 10 to make it work.

Unplugged: Testing The Xbox Wireless Adapter For Windows : Read more

 

[DelightfulDucklings]

Been looking forward to this for a while. 1 less wire I have to keep on my desk!

Minor typo in the first sentence by the way, the Xbox One is entering its third year of existence, not its second.

 

[jrrdmchls]

Xbox needs to allow us to do Co-Op split screen. With one person on the XBONE and the other on a local Windows 10 machine. That would be the bees knees as it is said.

 

[GameLifter]

When I first plugged in mine I didn't see it light up either and thought I got a dead adapter. Turned out I had to run a check for Windows updates and it found and installed the latest driver for it very quickly. Not sure if the author of this article tried this but it worked for me.

 

[dstarr3]

Xbox needs to allow us to do Co-Op split screen. With one person on the XBONE and the other on a local Windows 10 machine. That would be the bees knees as it is said.

The X-Bone can hardly hold a steady framerate when rendering one screen, much less two.

 

[jrrdmchls]

Xbox needs to allow us to do Co-Op split screen. With one person on the XBONE and the other on a local Windows 10 machine. That would be the bees knees as it is said.

The X-Bone can hardly hold a steady framerate when rendering one screen, much less two.

I don't know who's XBOX your playing on but my XBONE looks fine to me. This is just a hypothetical idea. I'm sure it will never come to fruition but a guy can dream.

 

[czerro_56]

Um, I don't want to be a bit harsh, but this will be. Reading these articles from this particular editor is kinda like reading something your grandfather wrote:

"So, the device did not work correctly upon initial installation. I had to connect to a 'website' and download a 'driver'. I'm not sure why hardware requires these 'drivers' as they call them, but apparently it is requisite. Once you jump through that hoolihoop, device works as advertised...but maybe not ready for primetime?!"

I've read several of Rexly's reviews and they all have this sorta stuff in them. I think the proper criticism is that the device doesn't come with drivers on disk OR that a device of this sort could actually have plug'n'play install accessibility where the drivers are available on the device and it would invite you to install the drivers or you could do it manually yourself. That's indeed weird.

 

[Nathan Fernandes]

If the driver is not installing by itself you don't need to do download anythinf manually, just run and check Windows update with the adapter connected and it will download the drivers for you. I did this effortlessly and it took me less than a minute.

 

[czerro_56]

@Nathan

That's silly, if indeed you need a windows update to use the device. It's noteworthy and weird.

But that was not the note. It was someone describing the leaps to download a 'driver' for a device.

The device should indeed be plug-n-play. The drivers should be on the device, and it should self-install when you plug it in. 99.9 percent of USB devices do this, and this capability is built into the system. It's weird that MS messed this up on their own platform. That's the only talking point.

I dunno why Rexly had to describe his trials of 'connecting' to a 'website' to obtain a 'driver' for his 'hardware', like it was freakin' super obscure.

 

[marce99]

Only usb devices I could use just by plug-in were storage devices, not any kind of controllers, so I guess it's pretty common. Also, windows update it's just a viable option, not the fastest, but it works. It also detects new updates for drivers and so. I guess we should stop complaining about this nonsense, the device works properly and it doesn't come with a cd, in a period where new systems doesn't have optical drives (not all of them)

 

[captaincharisma]

so what? if you already have a 360 controller and the wireless adapter for it your not missing much using the xbone controller

 

[epobirs]

Xbox needs to allow us to do Co-Op split screen. With one person on the XBONE and the other on a local Windows 10 machine. That would be the bees knees as it is said.

Potentially doable if the game isn't very demanding and leaves enough bandwidth to render two simultaneous perspectives. But why bother? A game native to both platforms that supports cross-platform multi-player would be far easier and wouldn't place extra load on any one participant.

 

[utroz]

He had to download a driver and install it to get windows to properly detect it, most of the time the windows generic drivers suck so why wouldn't you want to download the proper driver even if it is a MS product.. I got a real good laugh out of him talking about the pain of downloading and installing a driver.. 20 years ago we had to manually tell windows to load device drivers and all sorts of crap that was 100X harder than device drivers nowadays.. As things got easier more and more wanna be computer geeks mess with hardware and don't really have a clue..I would love to see these type of people install windows 3.11 and get it working with sound, cdrom, networking, and joystick..

 

[photonboy]

DRIVER COMMENT:
If you don't install a driver for a USB device that's because it already exists on the system.

The driver for the wi-fi receiver will simply be added via Microsoft Updates so this is only a short-term issue for people who haven't updated since the driver was added.

 

[Haravikk]

$24.99 is a bit steep when Microsoft could have just used regular Bluetooth for their controllers, giving out of the box compatibility with most PCs; it means that if you want to use an Xbox One controller with a PC, but don't already have an Xbox One, then the cost of the controller is far higher than it's worth.

So if you don't have an Xbox One already, it seems you'd be better off getting a Steam Controller, as it sounds like it is actually a more capable solution when it comes to replacing keyboard and mouse.

 

[eklipz330]

Fantastic that it can support so many controllers. I'll keep an eye out for a sale

 

[eklipz330]

Fantastic that it can support so many controllers. I'll keep an eye out for a sale

 

[blazorthon]

$24.99 is a bit steep when Microsoft could have just used regular Bluetooth for their controllers, giving out of the box compatibility with most PCs; it means that if you want to use an Xbox One controller with a PC, but don't already have an Xbox One, then the cost of the controller is far higher than it's worth.

So if you don't have an Xbox One already, it seems you'd be better off getting a Steam Controller, as it sounds like it is actually a more capable solution when it comes to replacing keyboard and mouse.

Ah, but then you might have people who figure out how to use non-Xbox one controllers on the Xbox one. MS can''t have that happening.

 

[jasonelmore]

$24.99 is a bit steep when Microsoft could have just used regular Bluetooth for their controllers, giving out of the box compatibility with most PCs; it means that if you want to use an Xbox One controller with a PC, but don't already have an Xbox One, then the cost of the controller is far higher than it's worth.

So if you don't have an Xbox One already, it seems you'd be better off getting a Steam Controller, as it sounds like it is actually a more capable solution when it comes to replacing keyboard and mouse.

I'll take this solution over bluetooth any day.. Bluetooth's range is horrible, it uses 2.4ghz, and audio is notoriously bad.

the xbox one controllers need the bandwidth of wifi because they can stream audio two ways wirelessly.

 

[badvok66]

I suspect this article was written quite some time ago, perhaps with a pre-release version of the adapter. I got mine pretty much as soon as it was available over here in the UK and it didn't require any driver download, it worked straight out of the box. I had my controller paired and was playing games in less than a minute.

 

[warezme]

I would suspect you could pull the driver that the browser downloads from your temp cache and move it it's own directory and it might install on a windows 7 or 8 box. If it is tied to the OS version, you can temporarily change what OS type that is reported and then retry. Often these version requirements for devices are arbitrary to force people to update.

 

[napster100]

Hum, that's rather interesting.
I'm quite enjoying my Steam controller at the moment, so I don't think I'll be looking at this for a while though.