If you are at all like me, one of the greatest features of the new Xbox 360 is the wireless controllers. I will not go into details into the specifications and features that we all know and love, but instead an undocumented feature.

The nice thing about having the wireless controllers for me, other than not having wires for my three and six year old to trip on, is how nice and clean the front of the Xbox looks without cables sticking out the front. After hooking up my iPod to the back port and buying three more wireless controllers (for a total of four), with rechargeable batteries and two play and charge kits, I had ugly cables sticking out the front of my 360 again. Most of my gameplay is single or with one other player, so the plan was to keep two controllers plugged in to be fully charged at all times. By the way, as a side note, there will be a two battery charger coming out soon that just plugs into the wall. I had an extra powered USB hub laying around, so I plugged it in to the back and plugged in my iPod and two play and charge kits. Bingo! Now I can charge two extra controllers, play my iPod, and not have a mess of cables coming out of the front of my system. The only drawback is that it does not support the other undocumented feature of continuing to charge the controller if it is plugged in when you turn the system off.

I must say that this is an undocumented, unsupported configuration and have heard that it may not work with all USB hubs. If you have one that does not work, you can also try to plug it into your computer. It wont recognize a device, but at least it should charge it.

[Andy Girton]

[tags]xbox,xbox 360,andy girton,wireless controller,charge controller[/tags]