First-person shooters and gamepads don't mix! It's too damn hard to play.
It's not fun.
First-person shooter games are the greatest hit in PC gaming. They are also somewhat of a hit in many consoles, most notably the xbox (Halo and its sequel being the most prominent examples). However, there's one thing which irritates me in FPS games on game consoles:
First-person shooters and gamepads don't mix! It's too damn hard to play.
It's not fun.
You need a mouse and keyboard to play FPS games fluently. Sure, many Halo players have become really proficient at playing it with the gamepad, so proficient that they would probably kick my ass 10-0 even if I had a mouse and keyboard to play it. However, the playing of an average player looks just awkward and awful.
I just can't play FPS games with a gamepad. It's as difficult as playing with the keyboard alone. The original Doom didn't support but the keyboard, and it was barely playable in a fluent way. This is because Doom had only one axis of freedom. Since Quake FPS games have had two axes of freedom, and playing them with the keyboard alone (or a gamepad) is just a pain.
Just think of this: You arrive at a T-intersection. You want to quickly
look to the right and then to the left to see if there's anyone there.
Additionally you want to quickly also look back the way you came to
see that you have not been followed. With a mouse this can be done really
fast, in under 1 second. With a gamepad (or keyboard) it takes a horrendous
amount of time.
An analog stick is a poor substitute for a mouse. Not only it doesn't
achieve the same range of turning speed, it's also really hard to aim
accurately. Sure, you get better with time and training, but with the
mouse you already have years of training because the mouse is used to
aim accurately all the time almost everywhere. Also, quite irritatingly,
aim accuracy and turning speed are mutually exclusive with an analog
stick: Tuning one to be better will make the other worse.
Playing an FPS with a gamepad is just so damn hard. I recently was at a friend's home and I played Halo with him and some others. The typical round ended with the winner having 25 frags, the second something like 20, the third 10 and me -2. I think that in one round I ended with 1 frag. We played for hours, but it was just so damn hard that I couldn't improve. We then switched to another game with much easier controls (some car game viewed from aerial perspective) and I almost immediately could play at equal level with everyone else.
FPS games in a game console are not fun for casual playing. They are way too hard to play for people who have not played FPS games with the gamepad for years. FPS games and casual console playing just don't mix. It's a braindead idea.
Sure, mice and keyboards are available for some consoles, but how many people have them? None.