Ever since their creation games consoles have been stiff competition for PC gaming, affording most genres of game vastly superior controls to the traditional mouse and keyboard. PC peripheral manufacturers, however, have long been combating this console monopoly by bringing the few PC gamers hardcore enough to try such games on their PCs near-perfect facsimiles of the console game pads. The Saitek P220 was no exception and was clearly based loosely on the early non-analogue Playstation gamepads. Since then the P220 has evolved into the P880, sporting the title “Dual Analogue Pad” not unlike the similar Playstation evolution which brought far better controls to a new array of games and was worthy of a continuation to the official controller of the PS2. It is not surprising, then, that Saitek have worked to bring PC gamers even more of the features found in console gamepads, the P2500 sports an excellent rumble feature which sadly is largely unsupported in PC games. The logical conclusion of this evolution is, of course, wireless technology- so Saitek threw the near-useless and gimmicky rumble feature out of the window to bring a new incarnation of the “P” series.
The first thing that struck me about the P3000 was its weight, with the lack of a rumble feature the controller becomes significantly lighter and more comfortable to hold, and at no cost but the loss of a feature which none of my games supported anyway. So, a gamepad is a simple thing, it has no reason to be heavy but the battery packs would be another case entirely, or so I thought. Lifting the small box-within-a-box out of the Saitek package I looked eagerly beneath it in search of the battery packs I deemed would be a bulky and weighty affair the likes of mobile phone batteries and the ten million double-As that are required for most wireless PS2 peripherals. To my surprise I found these battery packs within the small box I had lifted out in search of them and, further to my surprise, they weighed next to nothing. Saitek have struck the mark once more by following a strict code of innovation and damned-good design. Not only are the P3000 battery packs rechargeable (Yes, I mean the plural, there are two battery packs so that you can use one whilst the other is charging) but they are incredibly light and fairly small. Whilst you play away with one battery pack slid into your controller 'Dreamcast VMU style' the other one slips into the handy docking cradle and charges on good old USB power. Not only does this mean that you will always have power for your controller but that you could, essentially, take it with you to any computer, anywhere and not have to worry about power supply voltages when charging. Unfortunately this leads me to the first “design flaw” in the P3000, it may be a minor one but it can be irritating none-the-less; as the charger is USB powered it does not charge whilst your computer is turned off.
The second design flaw is more a quirk of the P3000 rather than an actual flaw in the design, I have established that the pad is based heavily on the PS2 Dual Analogue pads however it only actually sports two shoulder buttons, instead of the four boasted by the PS2 equivalent. This may seem like a small "flaw" at first, but once you become used to the very handily placed shoulder buttons on a PS2 pad you will surely miss them in the P3000. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a fine example of a game which could really use an extra pair of shoulder buttons so that jump/cancel/special/attack could all be assigned in such a way that you can still press them when manuvering both your character and the camera. Instead of the two additional shoulder buttons the P3000 places two very small and fiddly buttons alongside the already over-small four buttons on the right (which relate to Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square) giving your right thumb a whole lot of buttons to press.
None of the buttons on the P3000 are pressure sensitive, this would have been a very nice thing to see on a gamepad, having each button relate not only to a button press but to an axis for those games which support it. It is quite a good pad to use in racers and pushing forward and holding the right stick to accelerate is a touch more difficult than pressing a button firmly. The P3000 also lacks buttons that, for the sake of simplicity, we will call “start” and "select". Instead there is an analogue/digital switch which simply swaps the primary X/Y axis between the left Analogue stick and the left Digital 8-way directional pad, and a "scan" button used for...well...scanning.
The P3000 does, however, have Saitek’s trademark programmability features and boats a single "shift" button which can be used alongside the programming software to essentially double the number of command assignments. I found this feature extremely useful when playing Prince of Persia: SoT, my PC is in my study so I simply rigged a long cable to provide video-out to the TV and sat in bed with the P3000. Soon enough I fell off a wall in PoP and found myself presented with a "continue" option that could only be clicked by the mouse in the next room. Saitek had the solution, however, I simply closed down the game, started up the programming software and crafted myself a PoP profile which would convert the left analogue stick to a fully functional joystick-mouse when I hit the shift button. Sorted. I now have complete control of PoP, including all the save menus and even my entire PC desktop, from the comfort of my own bed. It is worth a mention that the programming software included an entry for the Digital/Analogue button, meaning it is possible to assign a function even to that although I am not sure what this does to the Digital/Analogue switch function.
The overall design and feel of the P3000 has not changed much from the P2500, a little in the way of colour matching has been done and now all the components of the pad are either black or silver rather than the deep-greys in the rubberised parts of the P2500 which look a little "off" in comparison to the P3000. Aside from the colour there are no changes of note apart, of course, from the fact it now has a "scan" button and a Dreamcast-controller-esque slot in the top in which you slide the power pack you want to use.
The most important thing in a wireless controller (second to battery life which Saitek more than sorted) is, of course, the range. The range of the P3000 is nothing short of miraculous – to give you an idea of just how miraculous I am going to do a brief and very un-scientific test as I write this article. With VNC to monitor my PC desktop remotely I will proceed downstairs with laptop and gamepad in hand...done...well I am downstairs at the other side of my house (although it IS small) still wiggling the analogue stick and watching my cursor do a crazy dance on my screen. So there is no conceivable use for that kind of range, but the fact of the matter is the P3000 is capable of controlling both your game and your mouse from the other side of a large room, so if you have a screen big enough, and eyes good enough, you can laze in bed and play games on a distant PC. My strictly unscientific and spur-of-the-moment test has proven beyond most doubt that the P3000 delivers on its wireless promise, the dual batteries and solid PS2 gamepad based design strengthen this and provide a solid gaming peripheral at home on any PC desk. The lack of shoulder buttons are the only real drawback of the P3000, I can not really fault it on the USB charging as most wireless peripherals (including some by Saitek themselves) go for the battery option and leave out the obvious benefits of rechargeable battery packs altogether. That said, a pair of rechargeable AA batteries and a charger will not set you back much these days and could be used in most wireless and wired gadgets – so proprietary battery packs may not be the best solution.
If you are looking for a wireless gamepad then look no further, if you are a PS2 gamer then you will feel quite at home with the P3000 and for any other gamer the Dual Analogue design is surely the best option, with the sticks flexible enough to perform any function from moving your character, to a car accelerator, and even controlling your mouse cursor remotely the possibilities are endless. The P3000 operates on the same frequency as a standard wireless network, as a wireless network user I have not noticed any problems that seem directly related to it, not even an increase in interference – I am not even sure if such things are possible. If you have not got the cash to lay down on an expensive controller but still want a gamepad to ease your PC-platformer-playing then I would suggest the Saitek P2500 instead which I picked up for just under £20, the rumble motors make it a little heavier than the P3000 but it is still the same solidly designed and fully programmable gadget.>
