“Give me your poor retro gamers, your d-pad using masses yearning to breath the freedom of an arcade joystick,” says Mad Catz… or at least that’s what I thought they said. Responding to the complaints of Pac Man and Frogger fans everywhere, Mad Catz will be releasing the “Xbox Live Arcade Stick”, or at least that’s what this image - found briefly in EB Games’ product listings and then promptly removed - would seem to imply. The design replaces one of the analog sticks on the original 360 controller with a large joystick, alleviating some of the problems gamers have been complaining about with the XBLA titles.

Still, there’s a lot about this design that doesn’t make sense. For starters, having the joystick in the top left corner of the controller means that you’re probably going to have to super-glue this thing to the floor to keep it from banging around. And with Street Fighter II recently released on Live Arcade, one would also wonder why Mad Catz didn’t have the foresight to move some of the trigger buttons onto the face of the controller, giving us the old 6-button fighter lovin’. In fact there’s no real indication of where the shoulder buttons even went! Frankly, if someone could just work out the wiring to get a SNES Super Advantage working on a 360, I’d be happier.

Rumor is this unit will drop for $49.99 and will be bundled with some Live Arcade games, and more details are expected later this month. Personally, I’ll be waiting for some reviews before running out to buy this puppy.