Review: Controller Companion turns your joystick into a wireless mouse and keyboard

It's no secret that the best joystick for PC is Xbox 360. With official drivers for Windows, the controller works exactly as it does on the console (even wirelessly, using the wireless adapter). The massive majority of games in Steam has native support for controller layout, button scheme and vibration.

But not everything is rosy: it is not possible, for example, to control the mouse pointer with the analog or turn off the wireless control natively (it is necessary to pull the battery compartment). In order to solve these problems, Jacob Korsgaard (happy on Steam) developed the Control Companion – which promises to elevate the experience of using the joystick in Windows. The application transforms the control into a fully functional mouse, also adding a circular keyboard.

I tested the first version and the results were great. While on the desktop, the control works perfectly as promised: the use of the analog as a mouse pointer is quite natural – you almost forget you're using a joystick. When accessing a game or application in full screen, Companion is turned off and the joystick works as usual. When finishing the game in question, the Companion mode is automatically reactivated. Another great feature is the ability to turn off the wireless controller with the Guide + Back button combination.

The only downside is that for now Companion shuts down in any full screen app - even if the app in question doesn't support joysticks, as in the Netflix for Windows 8.

very promising, the Controller Companion still awaiting approval from Valve on the Greenlight to be released on the Steam store. If you don't want to wait and dispense with the keyboard and mouse right now, you can buy it for 3 dollars (about 10 reais) using this link.