Yeah I'm seriously looking forward to this one.
did you play either of the Steel battalion games for Xbox???
No I ended up skipping them because I basically ignored Xbox for its entire retail life, but I heard they were good. That, and well I did not want to invest the cash on that control set up when I knew it wouldn't get a lot of support outside of Capcom. I've put in some time on the Heavy Gear and Mechawarrior stuff on pc though. I actually need to install Front Mission Evolved again and see how it is on multiplayer, though as far as mech sims go it was pretty basic on single player. When the time comes, I have a slew of different flight sticks and stuff, including the X52 with the lcd screen, that I can use to do some kinda custom set up maybe for Hawken. Just have to wait and see what happens when the beta is a go.
You know, I am not even sure if I would count FM Evolved as a sim. If I remember right there was not even a cockpit view for the game.