Microsoft’s Xbox wireless gaming receiver doesn’t work. Why am I surprised?

If you are not familiar with the wireless gaming receiver from Microsoft, it is a device that let’s you use your xbox 360 controller with your PC. Well at least in theory that is. Here is the story on how I wasted my Friday night.

I bought the receiver at Bestbuy ($20) came home, installed the latest version of the online software first, plugged the gaming receiver in and poof, my wireless usb internet connection was down. Then I uninstalled it, removed the device, rebooted… no problems. So then I changed my wireless usb device that connects me to the net with a different one that I own and this time it worked, well my internet connection did anyway, but the controller wouldn’t connect with the device. (you do this by pressing the connect buttons on both the controller and the receiver.) (and yes I did have my xbox 360 unplugged) At this point I decided that slaughtering a small lamb would make the gods happy. It did make the controller lights flicker on and off for a few seconds, but no luck with the device and now I had to clean up cause my cat was leaving red paw prints all over the place.

After doing some research and cleaning up, I found out that many other people are having similar issues with this unreliable product. I talked to Mike (one of the other awesome editors on this site) and he mentioned how the device is on the same set of frequencies that your wireless device(s) are on. In other words, major conflict. I even read that some logitech wireless keyboards and mice also become unusable. Mike did mention that I could try and switch the channel frequency of the wireless devices to a different channel and this could fix my problem, but sadly I tried this and had more success with the lamb. And Microsoft wonders why their reputation is what it is. Case in point! On a positive note, lamb chops are really tasty.