Well, I knew this would happen, despite all of those people saying “if it costs more than $60 it’s dead in the water”, it’s a great piece of hardware made by a company with an excellent track record for a very competitive price when you consider that nothing else even comes near it.
I knew it (the breaking of the Steam) would happen despite all those people simply because it (the breaking of the Steam) happens at the start of pretty much every major sale and hardware launch.
Someone at Steam just turns off half of the servers on launch so that it looks like there’s so much traffic smh my head
Creating hype, SMH. DJ Khaled knows how to handle these situations
8bitdo consistently blows away first-party controllers. I even read the article to confirm that they do also make the comparison.
8BitDo controllers are great, I have one, but they don’t come near a steam controller (they are closer than first-party ones though).
I mean aside from the touch pads (which I don’t use since I’m a PC gamer I don’t really see how it’s loads better than the wired Xbox controller I already have.
Honestly, unless you were already in the market for a controller I don’t really see the appeal.
Touchpads are for PC gamers. It allows you to play KB+mouse intensive games with a controller because one trackpad can be made to work like a trackball (with inertia and all) and the other like a radial menu so it gives you precision and lots of inputs. You’re obviously not going to be top competitive with it, but anything you can imagine using a trackball for becomes available.
But aside the touchpads (which like I said are meant to target specifically PC gamers) it also has back buttons (which make lots of things a lot more ergonomic, e.g. old games where you hold A to run thus removing your thumb from the camera controlling stick, or games made for keyboard that have lots more inputs than what fits on a controller), gyro (which makes fine aiming on shooters a LOT more bearable with a controller) and capacitive sensors (which allow you to detect if your hand is somewhere, which means you can only activate gyro when touching the trackpad or ratchet the controller to reset aiming for games that don’t like mouse input for aiming or even possibly allows you to do crazy things like switching the layer on your controller making it so that if you’re playing one-handed whole drinking coffee the inputs on the rother hand change to give you the extra buttons you might need).
Gyro controls. They take a bit to get used to, but I can’t play any sort of shooter without them. Also back buttons if you don’t have the elite controller.
The touch pads aren’t something to dismiss either, having similar controls on my steam deck, they really open up the door to games you wouldn’t otherwise be able to play on controller. Steam input is really powerful, you can map them to all sorts of different inputs. For example emulating ds / 3ds games you can have the touch pads display a radial menu on screen that interacts with the ds touch screen in a specific pre-defined way depending on what you select.
But ultimately, I want a controller with gyro controls and back buttons that’s easy to map (read steam input because it changes mappings automatically per game) so my only options are the dual sense edge or the steam controller.
Touchpad + gyro is closer to mouse than gamepad in terms of aiming accuracy.
You can actually play PC competitive shooters on a Steam Controller / Deck against KB&M users and hold your own against most players. The same can’t be said for gamepad.
Uhh, cs flick shots? I have doubt.
People got 30 minutes to actually buy them? I was sitting at my desk refreshing every second during the steamdeck preorder and that was an absolute fuck fest. I got my first round preorder but swear it took like 6 hours. People forgot about that almost immediately. I swear steam core functions purely off a single server in gabies basement while the worlds largest digital economy is decentralized to everyone personal PCs and game servers.
Did they discontinue the original Steam controller?
Weird to have 2 products with the same name, even if they are not sold at the same time?They discontinued it many years ago after they were hit with a patent lawsuit and sold off their remaining stock for 5 € a piece.
I was one of those people who snatched up a cheap one. It made me feel less guilty about not using it because, as a lot of people predicted, the lack of joysticks did indeed suck.
I got one on ebay a couple of years ago. For me the missing d-pad is even shittier.
The premise was cool.
Playing a game where you need a dpad? Spend twenty minutes hacking up config files and the haptic pad of your choice acts and feels almost kinda sorta like a dpad!
Well okay, maybe not that cool.It works fine, and didn’t take 20 minutes… It’s a basic part of the software. Still, if they can include one that’s a better option.
It doesn’t have a missing dpad, the whole point is the pads can be used for everything including sticks, buttons, dpads and more.
The old one looked cooler IMO.
Wasn’t the patent lawsuit over the Steam Deck? I thought the original controller was discontinued over lack of demand or something.
https://screenrant.com/valve-steam-controller-lawsuit-controversy-patent-ironburg-inventions/
Ironburg Inventions is the IP holder for SCUF, a controller manufacturer. According to the plagiarism lawsuit against Valve, SCUF patented a controller with rear-facing side buttons in 2014. Then, the prototype for Valve’s Steam Controller was unveiled with the same rear-facing side buttons the following January, even though the company had warned Valve about the patent. The lawsuit alleged that Ironburg continued warning Valve about the patent and even wrote a letter detailing the infringement to the company - which Valve simply ignored.
Patents are so fucking stupid. This is the second most obvious one I know of (the first being random encounter via nintendo)
Wow I wasn’t aware of the history, patent law is nebulous bullshit.
Huh, I knew that was the patent in question (though I thought it was Sony that held the patent), I just didn’t think the original Steam Controller had rear buttons.
Yes they’re very nice.
Insane that “button” can be a patent
They discontinued the original one years ago. And it’s pretty common for things to evolve and keep the same name. Especially now in the time of remakes and reboots.
Can’t wait for Half Life (20XX)
The original steam controller was discontinued like 6 years ago.
Still it’s weird to make a new product with the exact same name.
Is it?
Like, literally every new version of a product does this. The 2026 Honda Civic is a complete different car from the 2019 Honda Civic. Is it weird that it has the same name?
At least there it’s pretty standard to include the model year, and if you really need to get into it, trim levels.
You’re welcome to call it the 2026 Steam Controller.
You could do it like a movie: I was a big fan of Steam Controller (2015) and saw it twice, but I’m not going to see Steam Controller (2026), at least not for a while.
Yes I think it’s weird, and I’m not aware of many industries that use the same system as many car manufacturers do.
For instance Peugeot change the number when they make a new model, so a Peugeot 205 (1997) was followed by the 206 (2006) then 207 (2011) and 208 (2026).
That’s the right way to do it.
With Honda civic bought in 2011 and Honda civic bought in 2015, you don’t know if they can use the same spare parts. Even when you know the exact time the car was bought, the model year may change at any time during the year.
So you need to have the exact model, as Honda Civic from 2015, doesn’t tell you for sure what spare part to get, if a new model came out that year.The way the car industry does it is moronic, and should quite frankly be illegal. There should be easy model identification for when spare parts are needed.
Yes!
Well, if you can’t buy neither then there’s no problem. 🤣
True. 😋
It may be obvious that I don’t use controllers, I use keyboard and mouse.
But the original controller was highly praised, so I was surprised to see they didn’t have it anymore, and I find it weird it’s not called Steam Controller II or something.Valve must be thinking that only a small fraction of their target audience is aware of the original.
They might be right, we’ll see.
Yeah shoulda called it the Game Reamer 9000
Release controller -> people buy controller = news
But you don’t understand, people buy controller very hard!
I want one because it’s both high quality and is guaranteed to work under linux. I’m sick and tired of endless fuckery with reverse engineered xbox wireless controller driver
Preach!
Release controller -> people buy controller = news
R = Release P = people B = buy C = controller N = news
[Release controller] -> [people buy controller] = [news]
[RC] -> [PBC] = N
[RC]/C -> [PBC]/C = N/C
R -> PB = N/C
[R -> PB] - N/C = 0
OR
[Release -> People Buy] - News/ Controller = 0
The controller was released?! I’ve been waiting…
Silksong release was still bigger. They didn’t sell out(*) and the store was down longer.
*: An advantage to digital delivery.
Silk song fans “don’t mention silk song challenge” level: impossible
I think other Skongposters probably held off; I did a quick search of the thread to make sure I was at least the first person on my instance to mention it. 😜
But, you got me.
