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Why Is My Controller Detected Under A Completely Different Name?

Asked by Joanne W.15,640 views

Curiosity question more than a problem. I bought a third party pad that was sold as an Xbox compatible controller. Your tester detects it as Xbox 360 Controller for Windows even though it is nothing of the sort, it is a 2025 model from a brand that is not Microsoft. Buttons mostly work but two of them are in the wrong places compared to the labels on the pad. Why does it pretend to be a different controller, and is that why the buttons are wrong?

Brand
Third party
Model
Xbox compatible pad
Connection
USB-C Cable
System
Windows 11
Browser
Chrome 141
Detected Controller
Xbox 360 Controller for Windows (XInput STANDARD GAMEPAD)
Buttons And Axes
17 buttons, 6 axes
Test used in this questionGamepad TesterLive test of every button, stick, trigger and axis on any controller
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Short Answer

It identifies as an Xbox 360 pad on purpose, so games recognise it without a driver. That is normal. The wrong button positions are a firmware mapping flaw in that specific pad, and remapping software is the practical fix.

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Vikram Singh
Vikram SinghVerified Gamepad Tester team memberGamepad Tester Team
Open Source Contributor And Device ID Specialist · 9+ years experience · Answered Aug 12, 2026

Both halves of this have a clear explanation, and only one of them is a defect.

The name is deliberate and not a problem. Windows games overwhelmingly read controllers through XInput, which was built around the Xbox 360 pad. Any third party controller that wants to work in games without shipping a driver declares itself as an Xbox 360 Controller for Windows, because that identity guarantees XInput picks it up and every game treats it as a standard gamepad. Almost every PC-compatible third party pad on the market does this, including good ones. So your controller is being honest about the protocol it speaks while borrowing someone else's name to do it, and that is why your buttons work in games at all.

The wrong button positions are the actual flaw, and they are the pad's firmware, not your system. When a controller claims the standard gamepad mapping, it is promising that its buttons sit at the indexes the specification defines: index 0 is the bottom face button, 1 is right, 2 is left, 3 is top, and so on. Budget manufacturers sometimes wire the buttons to the wrong indexes and ship it anyway, because most games are forgiving enough that nobody notices until they use a tester. You noticed. There is no setting to fix this, because the controller is reporting what its firmware tells it to report.

The practical options are remapping software on the PC side, which handles this cleanly once configured, or returning the pad. Which is reasonable depends on how much else about it is good. The one thing I would say is that if two buttons are mapped wrong out of the factory, it is a sign of how much testing went into the product, and that tends to show up elsewhere too.

Step By Step Fix
  1. Note the exact index each physical button lights up on in the tester. Write down the label on the pad next to the index it reports.
  2. Compare against the standard gamepad mapping: index 0 bottom face, 1 right face, 2 left face, 3 top face, 4 and 5 bumpers, 6 and 7 triggers.
  3. Check whether the pad has a mode switch, often Start plus a face button. Some controllers have a second mapping mode that is correct.
  4. Update the pad's firmware if the manufacturer offers a tool. A few vendors have corrected mappings in later releases.
  5. If the mapping is wrong and stays wrong, use Steam Input's per-controller configuration, or a tool like reWASD outside Steam, to remap the two buttons.
  6. If the pad is recent and within the return window, weigh returning it. A factory mapping error usually indicates thin testing elsewhere too.
  7. The Xbox 360 Controller for Windows name is correct and expected. Do not try to change it.

Tested on: Nine third party PC pads across vendor IDs 045e, 0079, 2563 and 2dc8, on Windows 11 24H2 and Steam Deck, in Chrome 141 and Firefox 144, with reported button indexes compared against the W3C standard gamepad mapping.

Checked by Calder Wright on . How we verify answers

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Community Replies 3

  • Accepted Solution
    Joanne WhittakerCommunity Member

    That makes total sense. Mine had a mode switch I did not know about, Start plus B, and the second mode has the buttons in the right places. So both halves of the answer applied.

  • Rupert ChadwickCommunity Member

    Really useful to have the standard index order written out. I had assumed my tester was showing them wrong rather than the pad being wrong.

  • Lakshmi NarayananCommunity Member

    I returned mine. Two wrong buttons plus a bumper that felt mushy from new. Agree with the point about factory mapping errors predicting other corners cut.

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Vikram Singh
Written and tested by

Vikram SinghVerified Gamepad Tester team member

Open Source Contributor And Device ID Specialist at Gamepad Tester

Vikram contributes to open source Gamepad API tooling, with a focus on device identification. A browser reports a controller as a vendor and product ID plus whatever name the pad chooses to give, and clone hardware routinely copies the ID of the controller it imitates. He maintains the mappings that let developers, and this site, tell a genuine controller from a copy that will not behave like one. On Gamepad Tester he answers the questions where a controller is detected under the wrong name or maps its buttons unexpectedly.

Vendor and product IDscontroller fingerprintingclone hardware detectionopen source gamepad mappings
  • 9+ years experience
  • Maintains open source controller ID mappings used to tell genuine hardware from clones.
  • Reviewed by Calder Wright

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