Valve Debuts the Steam Controller

The third and final announcement from Valve’s week of Steam Universe is here, and….it’s a controller. While the initial hope of finally getting a real announcement for a third entry in ANYTHING (Half-life especially) was dashed upon reading this, once the repeated sense of destroyed dreams wears off the controller itself does look pretty interesting, and certainly a different direction from what has been seen in most Console and PC gamepad designs.

The most noticeable difference is of course the pair of track pads in place of what are most commonly control sticks, which Valve claims will lead to a much higher resolution of control options for those PC gamer’s spoiled by the beauty of a mouse, and are each also clickable serving as additional buttons. The goal of these track pads is to make a gamepad that is actually worth using for genre’s traditionally exclusive to PC with keyboard and mouse, particularly RTS games and MOBA’s like Dota 2 (Valve also made sure to point out everyone’s favorite PC exclusive, Euro Truck Simulator 2).

As a result of the touch pads being used in place of traditional sticks, Valve has also pointed out that the controller will need a slightly more delicate approach to grip and feeling, and as a direct result they’ve designed the controller to make use of Haptic feedback as opposed to the currently more common crazed rumble feature, which will allow for more nuanced and locational vibrations and also double as miniature speakers.

Next up the controller has a center touch screen which serves as a way to enable numerous features or buttons that may not have been able to fit on a regular controller, for those games that took full advantage of a keyboard interface. One interesting note is that while the screen itself will display images, touching it will prompt it’s UI to overlay what’s currently on your monitor, meaning you never have to take your eyes off of the center of the action in game. Also, like the touch pads, the touch screen itself is also one giant button.

The controller has a total of 16 regular buttons, placed in a manner that Valve claims is based off of studies for maximum efficiency and ergonomic design. Half of the buttons are placed in locations that don’t require thumbs, allowing them to stay on the track pads as long as possible. These include two buttons on the back, 4 shoulder buttons, 4 traditional buttons (abxy) placed along the inner sides of the track pads, 3 start/select buttons on lower front side, and the previously mentioned 3 touch interfaces that double as buttons. It’s worth noting that this controller is completely symmetrical, meaning that it can be picked up for both right and left handed gamer’s with equal ease.

Overall it’s certainly one of the more unique gamepad designs to come out, and it will be interesting to see the beta feedback concerning its usefulness in both traditional gamepad focused titles, and those most often reserved exclusively for keyboard and Mouse. While it’s certainly not the announcement many were hoping for, it’s definitely an interesting one as well as a bit of a gamble. Even if the controller ends up being usable for RTS or MOBA games, will it offer a good enough reason to use it INSTEAD of a keyboard, or will performance with it suffer a noticeable drop? Let us know what you guys think in the comments, and as always thank you so much for reading Tech of Tomorrow!