$60, has capacitive joysticks, gyro, steam menu buttons, and 4 extra buttons. Fully supported in Steam Input.
However, no track pads or vibration.
DoA without rumble.
A shame it doesn’t have hall effect thumbsticks (and vibration), but more quality controllers I will not shake a stick at.
Touch capacitance on the stick is a gyro-must for me, so im happy to finally see a controller with this. actually just ordered this from amazon japan, didnt think it would actually get a US release.
While I’d like it to have rumble and trackpads, I pre-ordered one (to Canada).
I just want the xbox button layout with proper motion controls, which it seems like this delivers on, and with a bonus of actual back buttons (that can be mapped in Steam, unlike when controllers emulate Xbox or switch controllers)
I want one with trackpads
You’re still better off with something from 8Bit-do at that price. If they included trackpads and vibration it would’ve been a nice Steam Controller v2.
Yeah the track pads are so cool! I don’t use mine much, but for RPGs with a lot of abilities being able to setup little touch menus is indispensable. Considering the deck has the same interface it makes complete sense for docked mode to have an equivalent device.
it i didn’t have a billion Stadia controllers i might.
Yeah I have 4 stadia controllers, and they’re great. But I do miss gyro/back buttons.
Lol, so many of us with crazy amounts of Stadia controllers. I even gave away like 3 and still have 4 🤣
12x more than I paid for the real Steam Controller and only a fraction of the features. Was hoping it would be priced more affordably
I’ve preordered it. I have a few hori controllers. Some are worse than others. Even though its design is pretty much identical to their switch controller, I honestly want to give it a try. My goto controllers lately have been the PS5 controller and the Gamsir g7 se. I have been playing everything recently on Bazzite so it’s been fun to try out different controllers for different games.
Without all the features that actually made the Steam Controller great… yeah
I don’t understand how they got the official steam brand name, it’s just a mid-end controller with some major features missing.
Cool, I like the capacitive sticks, but not what I’m waiting for. I want a Steam controller 2 that’s a Deck without the touchscreen. Anything less and I’m not really interested
I’d like it kinda like the PlayStation controller with the pad in the center.
Now that you mention it, is there a way to make the pad work on the steam deck in those controllers?
The DualSense touchpad is detected and can be configured in steam input if you have it enabled for the controller
I still regularly use my original Steam Controller – for the trackpads. It allows me to do M+KB strategy gaming from the couch.
This lacks the killer feature, IMHO, given that I can use any of a wide variety of regular Bluetooth controllers for stuff with controller support.
What really sets the Steam Controller (and the Steam Deck’s control layout) apart from the market are the dual touchpads and dynamically/easily programmable buttons. The above just looks like a reskinned XBox controller, and, if I read the article right, it needs a “companion app” to get full functionality out of the controller.
I hope that they at least made sure that the companion app works on the Steam Deck.
Not having the touchpads is a big downside, but this still fills a huge niche that the others dont. My Xbox elite controller is cool and all, but has neither a gyro nor capacitive joysticks. My dualsense has a gyro, but no capacitive touch so I need to activate it with a button hold or leave it always on.
The Xbox and PS5 controller also don’t treat the paddles as independent buttons by default, so you need an extra layer of software on PC that allows mapping those buttons to arbitrary inputs. Steam Input can overwrite this sometimes, but it’s very inconsistent on a game + hardware basis. The companion app is a concerning “feature”. Hopefully it’s just marketing trying to make up a fancy phrase for “hardware driver”.
From what I understand, steam input has full support for it as well. As in it will show the controller in steam, and let you program back buttons/capacitive sticks/etc.
I think you only need the companion app if you aren’t using steam.
Edit:
Ah ok. That’s slick.
I wish steam would recognize all the buttons on my gamepad like that.
Anyone know how good Hori’s d-pad is?
It looked good, but the gyro is apparently awful and the trigger travel is basically non-existent.
description says no vibration at all. For $60?!
I don’t know how many people vibe with this, but the PS5’s high definition super Hitachi wand rumble or whatever is literally my favorite thing about it. I can’t imagine going for no vibration at all.
horse footsteps in RDR2 are just like amazing
This is cool and all, but no rumble is kind of a deal breaker for me
Yeah, I was totally on board till I got to that part. What an absurd exclusion :/
Yeah. When the early PS3 controllers did it everyone agreed it was stupid and eventually they made the DualShock 3.
Go figure. I usually turn rumble off.
yeah i don’t see why excluding rumble would be a deal breaker. is it an immersion thing?
Rumble is an information tool, it’s not just “haha, Brrr when shoot”. It’s incredibly useful in many ways, and also very much helps immersion. The rumble we have now is much more precise and varied than it was back in the n64 generation, especially with controllers like the ps5 dualsense. I have a Gulikit KK3 MAX and its rumble is amazing, with every feeling from small precise taps to arm-shaking explosions. And when a game has well designed rumble implementation, which many have now, it’s just awesome. One genre of games that really shine is racing games, you feel everything, even different vibrations on different parts of the controller if for example your left tires are on dirt and right ones are on asphalt.
A good example just from the top of my head was when I played Pacific Drive, your car can break in many ways and I always noticed that one of my tyres had a flat from the rumble before I noticed it any other way, and knew which side it was on just from the feeling.
