Joystick

A joystick is a personal computer peripheral or general control device consisting of a handheld stick that pivots about one end and transmits its angle in two or three dimensions to a computer.

Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. The term joystick has become a synonym for game controllers that can be connected to the computer since the computer defines the input as a "joystick input".

Apart for controlling games, joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as elevators, cranes, trucks, powered wheelchairs and some zero turning radius lawn mowers. More recently miniature joysticks have been adopted as navigational devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones.

There has a been a recent and very significant drop in joystick popularity in the gaming industry. This is primarily due to the shrinkage of the flight simulator genre, and the almost complete disappearance of space-based simulators.

Joysticks can be used within first-person shooter games, but are significantly less accurate than a mouse-keyboard. This is one of the fundamental reasons why multiplayer console games are not compatible with PC versions of the same game. A handful of recent games, including Halo 2 and Shadowrun, have allowed console-PC matchings, but have significantly handicapped PC users by requiring them to use the auto-aim feature.