The Nexus 7 tablet offers a great gaming experience for games like ShadowGun THD and Max Payne, but the touchscreen controls are incomparable to using a controller.
Fortunately, using an Xbox 360 controller to play games on the Nexus 7 tablet is easy.
All you need is a wired Xbox 360 controller and a small Micro USB to USB OTG adapterIt costs about $8 on Amazon. This adapter allows you to plug in the wired Xbox 360 controller.
This adapter allows you to use the Xbox 360 controller as a Nexus 7 controller.
Watch me play ShadowGun THD and Dirt 3 on OnLive using the Xbox 360 controller in our demo video below.
While Jelly Bean and Nexus 7 support wired controller use out of the box, not every game will work properly.
GTA III doesn’t offer the ability to map controls to a controller, so I can play, but I can’t use the trigger buttons to control the game.
ShadowGun THD and Max Payne work great and ShadowGun even lets me configure controls. If you’re looking for Nexus 7 games that work with a controller, download it for free NVIDIA TegraZone application and look for games with controller pointer.
The NVIDIA TegraZone app identifies controller-enabled Android games.
OnLive is working on Onlive Wireless controller support, but until then I can’t use the wired Xbox 360 controller to play some games. As you can see in the video, I can play Dirt 3 without any problems.
Games like HomeFront and Batman Arkham City won’t install on the Nexus 7, so I can’t test compatibility with the Xbox 360 controller. I’ll keep trying to use the OnLive app with the Xbox 360 controller to see if the games start working.
It’s not the most portable and modern solution, but it beats touch controls until companies like Nyko bring Android controllers to market.
