You are absolutely correct Sir, I am just a big fan of the arcade controllers and was showing an alternative, that I, personally, am hoping to pick up soon.....

Yeah, the xbox 360 controller is excellent for FPS and racing games but it's a crap for fighting games. You can buy an arcade controller (like I did) and destroy your friends much more.

The R2 and L2 on the ps2 controller are actually better than that of the ps3. I don't know what sony was thinking when they redesigned those buttons

Here man:
http://www.video-game-central.com/xb360-hori-real-arcade-pro-3-arcade-joystick.html
This controller works with any fighting game.

Am I the only one who never really had a problem with the D pad? Jeeze.

lol...way ahead of you.

Try this which turns 360 in to ps2 compatible controller -  http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/xbox360/XCM360XFPS/xfps-pro-1.jpg

Then add this which is the best pad ever made - http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-m-49-en-70-imb.html

And you got yourself a 200 dollar Win!

If you need a stick, Buy.com has the TE for $125.

http://www.buy.com/retail/usersearchresults.asp?store=5&qu=street+fighter+iv&loc=108&queryType=game&qxt=game&display=col

Amazon has it for $150 - both are much better sticks than the Street Fighter IV non-TE Fightstick and the HRAP EX. The HRAP EX for the 360 is just lacking Sanwa buttons (has the JLF), but considerng Buy.com has the TE for $125 there really should be no reason not to get the cheaper better stick. The SFIV Fightstick is more or less junk unless you buy parts to mod it. The shaft gets stuck and buttons war out quickly - avoid it unless it's purely for a mod. Some people have had problems with the TE, but it doesn't seem to be that many and most everybody is more or less enamored with it. There is a Tekken 6 wireless stick bundle, but it looks like it has Hori buttons, so there's a chance they could be soldered onto the PCB making a swap more troublesome. I have no idea if it has a JLF or Hori stick, though. There's also a Hori SE (which uses Seimitsu parts as opposed to Sanwa) coming out in October for about $140 if you're interested in that. Amazon has it up for pre-order.

If you're purely a pad player, the SFIV Fightpads are hit or miss and I can't recommend them at all - some people have it so the diagonals don't register well and for those that have them working, the controller itself seems to wear out pretty quickly. Don't buy it - it's too much of a hassle. If you can, test your friend's converter and make sure it won't lag. If it's the converter I'm thinking of lag can be as high as 6-8 frames (if the controller works at all), and with a game like Tekken that can really throw off your game. It worked with SFIV and that has a lot of link combos so I would guess it's near lagless, but just make sure before you spend $50+ on a converter.

For any PS3 pad player that love the Saturn pad, you can buy a USB Saturn Controller off ebay for about $15-$25. Sadly, it doesn't work on the 360. Oh well.

As others said - buy arcade stick :)
Even cheap 50$ stick will be better than DS2 for fightning games.