It began when Pro Player Tyler "Spartan" Ganza started a discussion on input delay for the new gen (series X) Xbox Controllers. He found that the delay is noticeably higher than the xbox one era. This wasn't a problem for him and other pros until recently. Pro controller giants like Scuf, Cinch, and battle beaver customs have all used the older lower latency models as their base. Now they have to use the Series X model as the older gen is out of production.
One of the things players can do is overclock their Xbox Controller. While this does noticeably improve the delay, it is forbidden under the HCS Handbook. The HCS considers overclocking a modification that provides an unfair advantage.
The SpawnKilled Solution
We knew that the DualShock 4 controller from Sony has about Half the input delay compared to the older gen Xbox Controller. It's important to note the DualShock 4 is faster on Bluetooth than it is on a wired connection. A Bluetooth playstation controller is more than twice as fast as a Series X wired controller. As evidenced by this graph
We showed this to Spartan on his tweet and explained how he'd be allowed to use a PlayStation controller for competition.
The top 15 Best Halo Player of all time, Heinz is now the HCS competition Coordinator and a leading authority in the eyes of the competitive Halo community. In his confirmation tweet he verified what we had stated. PlayStation controllers are allowed for PC competition because it'll work natively with Bluetooth. However, you can't use the playstation controllers on Xbox (Open Bracket) because it would require an adapter.
If you're currently an HCS Pro player, you best be keeping up with the joneses and buying yourself a new DualShock 4 v2. It's going to be hard to relearn how to play on an entirely different controller setup. But the reward of 2-3X faster input is well worth it.
If you're an Open Bracket competitor, You can't utilize the Dualshock advantage in the open bracket, because doing so requires this adapter from Amazon. (It is $45 USD and allows most controllers to work on most devices) But, you can use this adapter for all the online qualifier events and if you perform well enough, you can avoid open bracket and avoid using an xbox controller.
With the downgrade of Xbox Controllers and the fresh confirmation on the use of Playstation Controllers for PC Play, we're likely to see some shake ups at the next event! Will a COD playstation team jump in and dominate? Will some pros compete better with a playstation controller than they ever did before?
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