A disclosed gaming machine is coupled to a plurality of "USB gaming peripherals." The USB gaming peripherals, which may include one or more peripheral devices, communicate with a master gaming controller using a USB communication architecture. The USB communication architecture may include a vendor-specific class protocol. The USB vendor-specific class protocol may comprise: 1) a base protocol for defining message handling relating to peripheral device functionality common to a plurality of peripheral devices; and 2) one or more feature-specific protocol extensions for defining message handling specific to a USB feature where each feature-specific protocol extension defines feature-specific messages. The base protocol may be designed such that when one of the feature-specific messages is modified, the base protocol does not change.