Qemu doesn't currently emulate the correct value of the "register level programming interface" field in the PCI config space of USB host controllers. As a result, some guest operating systems (most notably Windows) fail to load e.g. generic xHCI drivers, and instead ask for a vendor-specific driver, which may not be always available.
Example: "-device nec-usb-xhci" emulates a Renesas (formerly NEC) uPD720202 xHCI controller. However, in the PCI config space, it shows us as class 0C, subclass 03, prog-if 00 (UHCI) where as the real uPD720202 (and all real xHCI controllers) have prog-if 30 (xHCI). A Windows guest booted with this option will not recognize devices attached to the XHCI controller unless drivers from Renesas are manually installed first, even though recent Windows versions include a generic xHCI driver that works perfectly well with real uPD720202 hardware.
That sounds surprising ... according to the source code:
https:/
... QEMU already sets 0x30 as programming interface byte there. Could you please double-check whether your problem still occurs with the latest version of QEMU?