Gearheads of War

I saw the post asking how to best mod your 360 and controller with sweet looks, but that isn't what I'm talking about.  What I am refering to is customizing your controllers to suit your style of play.  On several posts I have seen comments from gamers lamenting their fumbling with control sets between games or just wanting to tweek this or that button.  I have suffered the same fumbling. So, why do we have to suffer these structured control sets?  I mean really, there all just buttons.  Grant it, the sticks are fundamental so I'll not go there, but really, can't we pick and choose what everything else does?  I know the game developers go to great lengths to map their controls, and for some, it just makes sense, but shouldnt we be the final judge?

At the end of the day, shooters are all doing the same thing.  Some games add an action, the mysterious "x" button for Halo 3, or the game adds a new unique feature, like active reload in gears, but even that could be mapped to an alternate button.  And, if the game isn't a shooter, then mapping your own buttons helps you handle the situation.

How about this argument.  Pretty soon, console players are going to be competing with PC players.  PC players are going to have a more flexible control scheme and may even have the choice to map buttons for operations that console gamers won't.  Consoles will need some means to customize in order to eck out whatever advantage a gamer can.  Maybe once Shadowrun hits we will have a chance to see true comparisons between consoles and keyboards.  Then, if rumors are true, we will see Gears on PC.  When that happens, we may see either a trend of PCs competing against consoles, just like MicroSoft (MS) has been leading up to with 'Live Anywhere'.

If you say this can't be done, just because, then I need more convincing.  MS has created a gaming platform and given game developers criteri to fit the platform and meet basic xboxlive expectations.  So, why cant' they require game developers to allow gamers with full control of their button mapping?