It’s not the clearest photo, but it clearly has both 2 thumb sticks and 2 track pads.
“…it clearly has both 2 thumb sticks and 2 track pads.”
Hell yes, I am very bullish on the two thumb sticks and two touchpads being the controller format that will establish the steam deck/handheld gaming pc as the future of gamepads.
It won’t necessarily be a quick, all at once change, but that is because it is a strategic longterm play to reframe what a gamepad is, what its limitations are, and what kind of games can be played with a gamepad.
It will be the kind of thing people look back and point to as the beginning of the whole industry shifting into a new paradigm where playing cool indie games with a gamepad is something people associate with pc gaming first, console gaming second.
They just better have a gyro sensor in there too!
I’ve pretty much been asking for a steam deck without a screen, so if this leak is accurate than I for one am fucking STOKED
WOOOOOOOO
This thing looks almost as big as The Duke.
what 650g shape are you holding for an hour that doesn’t cause wrist pain?
I fear that, just like the Steam Deck’s controller, it won’t be usable without Steam running. IMO by default and without any special “driver” running in the background, the sticks and buttons should just behave like a Xbox controller.
The original Steam controller worked without Steam running, even including some of the extra features like mouse and scrolling functions for the trackpads if you wanted it to. So here’s hoping
The Steam Deck’s controller is usable without Steam running, except for that long, looong pause when Steam has taken over the controller but isn’t doing anything about it yet.
I wish that Steam would not put the mouse buttons on the triggers, just leave them on the trackpad-click. And put “high res trackpad scrolling” on the left pad. But you can’t have everything.
As you wrote yourself, the controller acts as a mouse, not as a regular Xbox controller.
Non concave? Square trackpads? Clear preference to analog sticks? This seems like a worse Xbox controller on the surface. Unless the ergonomics are somehow amazing I would be hesitant to buy it (and I own an original steam controller).
God dammit, why will nobody bring back 6 button pads? I’m so sick and tired of having to buy a separate controller just for fighting games. This controller would be absolutely perfect if it just had two more buttons…
Not the same thing, but the steam input allows you to make virtual buttons and assign them to the area of a touchpad.
Well that’s better than nothing so I’ll take it.
I’m just glad that Valve is bringing back the Steam controller. So sick and tired of boring, uninnovative Xbox and Playstation controllers. I like the idea of toggle switches under the controller that aren’t just remaps of existing buttons, and actually usable touchpads. I hope the left stick and D-pad are hot-swappable in the final version, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Doesn’t everybody play fighting games on “a piece of plywood with a bunch of arcade buttons jammed into it”?
Oh, and the backside buttons on the deck are pretty convenient. You might end up liking them more than having “more face buttons than your thumb can reach”.
I hope not. To get to the sticks you’d need giant hands.
It could just be my screen, but that render is hard AF to decipher. Here’s a quick n dirty curves manipulation to get better contrast.
Those trackpads better have damn good palm reject because getting to those thumbsticks without brushing the trackpads will be impossible for many people.
The steam deck already does in my experience!
The steam deck does
People were saying that about the steam deck before it came out. Maybe some people have had issues, but anecdotally I’ve literally never heard one complaint about that from someone who actually used the device. The way the joystick is elevated above the pad your palm really shouldn’t touch it
Aside from I don’t think that will actually be an issue, the thumb sticks are likely to have touch sensitivity on top like the steam deck ones have. So they can just disable the TouchPad anytime the thumb stick is being touched.
Again, though. I don’t think it will be an issue with your palms.
Awww, poor guy looks sad
Thank you - I couldn’t see the buttons between the track pads before. Does anyone have an idea what that might be?
if its the same as steamdeck, those are the steam and … (status) overlay buttons.
Anyone got a non-xitter copy of this news?
Thank you kind person.
Looks like they want to bring back the DukeI miss the duke
I still use the Duke. There’s USB adapters for it and I connect them to the docking station.
You’re in luck. The Steam Duke is coming our way!
Can someone put some blush marks and eye dots on it?
from xitter:
I shouldn’t quit my day job
There will probably be gamingonlinux/steamdeckhq articles in the morning, but for now this is the only source.
I love it. Absolutely buying one.
Makes sense that it would match the inputs on the Steam Deck.
Looks good. I just hope they bring back two-stage triggers, as those are missing from the Steam Deck.
What’s a two-stage trigger? Analogue until it’s all the way down, then a click (like the GameCube)?
This is correct, linear trigger with a click at the end very useful in desktop mode to have it slow the mouse movement with a trigger pull and then the trigger click for the mouse click.
You haven’t just been using the TouchPads in desktop mode?
The Deck triggers don’t have a physical switch at the end, but Steam Input does have soft pull and full pull mappings as well as settings to change when and how they activate.
Not quite the same as you have no tactile feed back on when you are about to enter the full pull part.
Oh that’s cool, I’d not even considered using it to control a mouse
I got an 8bitdo controller (ultimate 2C or whatever), and it feels really nice. Except the triggers are not two-stage. And it’s smaller.
Give us the circle pads back! Just keep making the steam controller actually, with another back paddle, hall effect stick… Damn squares.
Honestly not having a dpad and second thumbstick is a deal breaker for me on the original steam controller, it means that most games with built in controller support don’t work well without switching to a custom or community layout. I think having a “normal” controller layout + trackpads/etc is necessary for the controller to succeed.
Additionally, having this layout means it will match the Steam Deck, which should make all control profiles interchangable.
“Additionally, having this layout means it will match the Steam Deck, which should make all control profiles interchangable.”
Additionally an order of magnitude more indie devs who don’t have the cash for a steam deck could pick up used/new steam controllers for not too money and that will inveitably lead to an order of magnitude more devs actually trying out their game using steam deck control schemes and I think that will be hard to overstate in impact longterm on gaming… especially because transformative, revolutionary new gaming experiences almost exclusively come from these kinds of developers.
Look at the anemic evolution of VR games, it is because the developers who could innovate and grow the medium with the next big VR hit is sitting in the bedroom of their parents house making a different game because neither them or any of their friends can afford VR goggles.
Square pads are where it’s at until you start playing on a round TV screen. Besides, it’s way easier to set up hockey buttons in a square Touch Pad than a round one.
I was going to say that if you wanted one they’re cheap on eBay, but after checking, they’re $50+
Consider yourself lucky you can even find the damn things, where I live they simply don’t exist on the used market.
I’m getting ready to eat the bullshit import taxes and buy the SC2 as soon as it drops, I’m so pissed I missed out on v1 😒
