While reading a thread on these forums, someone mentioned that PS3 will accept almost any USB controller, so I picked up the Saitek P990 PC gamepad gathering dust in my drawer and plugged it in, and much to my surprise it has proved to be a pretty good controller after an hour or so of training mode work. Like the MadCatz gamepad it has six face buttons that will work perfectly with SF IV as the light, medium and heavy punches and kicks, plus you can chose to use either the accurate D-Pad or the light tension analog stick for directional input. The left shoulder buttons function as triple kick and punch buttons. After little practice, I was able to input the double quarter circle ultras pretty consistently. There are some moves like Akuma’s airborne Zanku Hadoken, that are a bitch for me to on my SE fightstick due to the long throws. This pad made them a breeze to pull off. The FPS button above the face buttons functions as the start button, and there is obviously no PS button. I am not sure if any button will work as select, but that button is not used in SFIV anyway. Couple of bad things about using this pad are that the FPS button is too close to the face buttons, so there is a chance to hit it accidentally, which will pause the game and the left analog stick sometimes gets in the way a bit if you are trying to use the D-Pad. The best thing about it is the price, and the fact it’s not sold out everywhere you look. Amazon sells this for only $16.65. I’ve had this pad for several years, and it is one of the most reliable PC controllers around.
http://www.amazon.com/Saitek-P990-Dual-Analog-Game/dp/B000AL703E