Yippy, another Microsoft steering wheel

I've been a racing fan since I first sat in the backseat of a friend's modified 5.0 Mustang in high school and since then I've done a lot of racing myself. I've owned several performance cars and driven all of them to their limits. Naturally I began playing racing games as well, and have been hooked since. Some of my favorites in the past were Sports Car GT, Viper Racing, Gran Turismo (1-3) and Forza Motorsport. As a writer on hardware and gaming, it was easy to acquire many steering wheels over this period and I'd estimate I've owned at least twelve in that time, including Microsoft's original force feedback wheel. Many wheels were too gimmicky (such as Act-Labs Force RS) which led to poor support, or too cheaply built (such as Joytech's Nitro) which led to broken parts, but Microsoft's wheel was a solid pick, other than its lightweight plastic construction and gameport connection. I really anticipated a follow-up for the Xbox and Xbox 360.

When I first bought my Xbox 360, I was dying for a decent wheel. I wanted to drift through Project Gotham Racing 3 with force feedback but settled for a rumbling gamepad. Kudos: it worked fine. Eventually I did buy the Joytech Nitro wheel (info here, ~$80) around the time Test Drive Unlimited was released, but was very disappointed by its sensitivity, cheap pedals, and poor construction. I actually snapped off the right paddle one day while playing TDU, and eventually returned it to Best Buy. I used the money to hack away half of the massive $150 required to buy this baby: Microsoft's Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel.

Opening the box

Since I made the purchase midway through a move, it sat almost 1000 miles away from my Xbox 360 for a month while I planned how to get the rest of my junk to the northwest. I had disconnected my Xbox 360 early in the move and waited this long to crack open the cardboard, but the day finally arrived earlier this week. You can imagine my anticipation, with Forza 2 right around the corner and a few great racers already released for the console. As I cut into the tape that held it together, the box disassembled into a small rainforest's worth of cardboard. The wheel is packed tight in the very high quality box. Mine had been driven nearly 1350 miles and moved twice by the time I opened it, but hadn't moved an inch in its fortress and had that wonderful “new electronics” smell.


Inside the box are the essentials: the wheel, pedals and base, the bracket that locks the wheel onto a table, power adapter and cable, a phone cord, two Energizer AA batteries, and a disc with Project Gotham Racing 3 (including Force Feedback support) and system drivers for the wheel. For more pictures of the packaging check [h]ere.

Initial inspection

This wheel is very stylish and extremely well built. The white exterior looks like the other Xbox 360 items except the center is extra shiny and smooth, resembling the front of a fine-tuned fiberglass race car. The unit is heavy, but in a good way. It is not as light as the previous Microsoft wheels or the Joytech, but not nearly as heavy as the Act-Labs RS or even the Logitech Driving Force Pro for Playstation 2 (at least as I remember).

The wheel itself features heavy padded rubber and a slick metal-looking (plastic) bottom-half, flattened a bit to make intense turning sessions possible even if the wheel is on your lap. The dark molded plastic base is smooth and comfy, extra wide, and had its own grip retention mechanisms. On either side are grey plastic compartments. One was just for looks, but the other opens up the battery compartment where you can install those Energizer batteries from earlier or if you've got an Xbox 360 battery pack, that instead.

The mounting bracket that holds the wheel to your desk (optional to install) has a hood-release looking button that unlocks it from the wheel and a large lock button to stabilize it on a desk. I just wanted to give it a try but as eager as I was to hook it up and start playing, something bothered me...

Wireless is a relative term

Honestly I hadn't done much homework on this wheel before I made the purchase. I knew from experience that Microsoft makes great wheels and that any wheel made for Forza 2 was probably the one to buy. After all, Forza was (at that point) the best racing game I had played and I wanted to have the best wheel for its sequel. Test Drive Unlimited was like crack, and Project Gotham Racing 3 always kept me entertained when I really wanted to beat on a fast car and slide it around some corners. That said, I had no idea this wheel required any wires.


You will need to hook-up at least one wire in order to use this wheel, though. It's the “phone” cord that runs from the backside of the wheel to the pedal base. Luckily though this cord is very light and easy to maneuver out of the way. Also the bottom-side of the pedal base has slots to run the cord though, so you can run it to either the left or right side easily without sacrificing any traction of the pedals on the floor. If you've used many wheels in the past, you'll probably remember the most annoying feature being the cables that ran between the pedals and wheel, to the power source, and to the console or computer.

The wheel runs off two AA batteries or an Xbox 360 battery pack and the battery life is excellent. As tested, the wheel took many two-hour sessions while showing no signs of fatigue, and from what I have read, I gather that with decent alkaline batteries you could get 20 hours or more of game play. But, enough of that... rarely when you use this wheel will you be playing a game without force feedback and trust me when I say you will want to have force feedback, meaning you'll need to plug-in the AC adapter. In the titles tested it only made the game more realistic and enjoyable without significantly impacting the difficulty level.

The problem for “wireless” fans is that if you want to use force feedback you must run the AC adapter to the wall and the power connection to the backside of the steering wheel. This makes sense, as it would drain the batteries in record time with that sort of action of its motors, and at least the one wire that interfaces between the wheel and the Xbox 360 is eliminated with its “wireless” connection. Still, a little more warning would've been nice and calling the wheel wireless is not really 100% fair (that's a few years off yet). I'm not complaining, though, as I hate dealing with batteries anyway and at least the adapter is small, the connection is solid, and the intelligently routed pedal wire makes the extra wires barely noticeable. If you want to be nearly wireless you can settle for no force feedback, but you may be missing out on this wheel's greatest feature.