Hori Officially Licensed Fighting Stick EX2 (Xbox 360)

This is my favourite new peripheral for 360 at the moment !

I always dreamed of having a good arcade stick for my fighting games on 360 and this is the answer to my problems !

I needed to get something to give me the edge in Street Fighter 4 and this was just the ticket.

I originally was going for a Mad Catz SF4 Fight stick , but they seem sold out everywhere at the moment. ( Mad Catz Fight Pads and Fight Sticks are like gold dust at the moment. The only option at the moment to get your hands on one is bidding on ebay at hugely inflated prices !) But this seemed a nice and cheaper alternative !

I was not disappointed ! It works as well as I could hope for.
One thing that I prefer on this Hori EX2 stick than the Mad Catz one, is the six button Layout instead of the 8 button layout most current gen sticks have as standard now.

Six buttons is perfect for games like Street Fighter and improves accessibility to combos ! An extra two big buttons would feel kind of unnatural, as I'd always be hitting them on accident.

The build of the stick is quite standard for japanese made arcade sticks with a clicky square gate stick ( some may say the cornering of the stick isn't smooth ..... but I think most people can tolerate and adapt to it )
The stick does seem kind of too loose / flimsy , but I can deal with that.

Not a bad stick to go with if you want a decent experience on arcade fighters. A good price and decent alternative if you can't get your hands on the more expensive specialised sticks.

Although a minor annoyance is air bubbles seem to have developed underneath the thin plastic wrap coating after a little playtime. But that's just a cosmetic defect.

Very good for six button standard games like Street fighter.
I keep hearing from many users this stick is prone to breaking easily.
But I have had it for almost a month now of regular use and it still works fine. Maybe some users are just to violent pounding on them.

I also hear that it is not an easy stick to mod either ( hard to replace parts ) , but I'm not into opening my tech up really anyway.

I still recommend this stick over any controller when it comes to fighting games , even though the stick isn't as perfect as I'd like, it still gets the job done a lot better than a d-pad controller.

Long term opinon : (Edited over a month later of the purchase )

Perhaps the various sources of info I've read of this arcade stick not lasting long are true after all. Over a month has past since I have written the above review and unfortunatly it seems , one of the buttons is showing signs of being unresponsive at times.
I find this to be a great shame , but not a suprise after hearing all the warnings. Well considering the price , as it is the cheapest arcade stick going that I could find , I guess it makes sense.
I have discovered the reason why this happens is because the buttons themselves are directly soldiered to the printed circuit board, instead of being connected to the board by wires like most sticks.
This causes the PCB to crack over time since the buttons are right next to the board, the board is going to feel every impact of each button press. ( Proper arcade sticks should have space between the buttons and the board and be connected by a wire )
Also because the base of buttons themselves are soldiered onto board directly, replacing the buttons themselves is not easy as if they were connected by wires instead.

This stick overall was still good , too bad it's lifespan is looking bleak for me though. It's a big shame overall exterior nice design was flawed a poor interior design decision that will definitely cause the stick the fail in the near future.
It's still a short term current solution to the early 2009 stick shortage if you still find it.

Great stick, excellent build, big & buttons are spaced out nicely, its much more fun to use than a standard joy pad. Takes a little getting used to after using a pad for so long, but after an hour you will be pulling of moves easy.

The pad also works great on the PC, it was plug & play for me in vista and was easy to use in emulators like MAME and all other games.

Really does give you that arcade feeling, highly recommend.

Amazaon was really quick on delivery I received it next day, thanks guys !

Having never owned an arcade stick before I didn't want to spend a fortune on a TE or other higher end sticks so I grabbed this at the release of HD Remix. The stick is always responsive, it fits well on your lap, the buttons are good but sometimes they feel a little 'lose' I'd like something more clicky if I could make an adjustment.

On a more advanced level, this stick can be modified with proper arcade parts (buttons, gates and sticks) but this will require finding a comprehensive guide and some tools.

The other great thing about this stick is that it works on Window's computers, so the library of games you can play with the stick opens up even more.

I've probably got well over 200 hours of playtime out of this stick and it is still serving me very well.

Overall a fantastic buy for the low price.