controller support and Madcatz PantherXL

[The Rock]

What's going on with these game developers, especially those who have created some of the latest FPS games like ST Elite Force, No One Lives Forever and others, with their lack of support for controllers/joysticks, in particular the Madcatz Panther XL which is designed for FPS games?! Case in point; ST Elite Force built on the Q3 engine which does support the Panther XL. The game's developers "disabled" strafing(you know how important that is!)in their movement controls! After over two months after the game was released a patch came that supposedly would fix this. Unfortunately this fix proved unsatisfactory. Although strafing was now available it was very imprecise. Sort of like steering a big limo or better yet guiding a yacht on the ocean! I know Madcatz worked with Unreal's developers to enable support for their controller "way back when", but I get the impression that any cooperation between developers and controller manufacturers(strangely with exception of MS hardware!!) is non-existant! I've learned from many forums that this does not have to be the case at all and I for one will not buy a game that does not support my controller of choice!