Valve Announces Steam Controller

Today Valve unveiled their third and final announcement about living room gaming: a Steam controller. The company made the determination that existing gamepads simply weren't good enough for bringing PC games to the living room, so they made their own. Instead of having directional pads or thumb sticks, the Steam controller has two circular trackpads. The trackpads are also clickable, and Valve claims they provide much higher fidelity than any previous controller trackpad. Valve also eschewed the traditional 'rumble' feedback mechanism: "The Steam Controller is built around a new generation of super-precise haptic feedback, employing dual linear resonant actuators. These small, strong, weighted electro-magnets are attached to each of the dual trackpads. They are capable of delivering a wide range of force and vibration, allowing precise control over frequency, amplitude, and direction of movement." The center of the controller holds a clickable touchscreen. "When programmed by game developers using our API, the touch screen can work as a scrolling menu, a radial dial, provide secondary info like a map or use other custom input modes we haven't thought of yet." The design also breaks up the common diamond-shaped button layout, instead putting the A B X Y buttons at the corners of the touchscreen. The controller is designed to be hackable, and Valve will "make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering." The controller is being beta tested concurrently with the Steam Machines they announced on Wednesday, so you can expect them to be on sale in 2014.

Comments

This actually looks really unusable

[i kan reed]

I don't mind the trackpads, they could be alright. Maybe. But the fact that they expect you to alternately press buttons with either hand makes me feel like it could be hard to simultaneously move and act in a game.(This must be how lefties feel all the time)

Re:This actually looks really unusable

[Kelbear]

Important difference here is that you have tactile feedback on your thumbs position relative to the center.

Furthermore, since the surface is clickable, it can be customized to only register input upon click-in...like a D-pad! On the right side of the controller, the trackpad 4 quadrants can function as a replacement XYBA. Mappings which are traditionally assigned to clicking a stick in, can be moved to the back of the controller.

I am cautiously optimistic about the design of this controller, it all hinges upon the execution of these ideas and the quality of construction. If nothing else, it would be a better way to play FPS and RTS games since it replaces relative input (i.e stick position relative to cetner), with absolute input (the input starts and stops in sync with the start and stop of the thumb movement).

Instead of constant movement towards a target, and having to time the release of the stick with the time of interception, you move until matched with the target and then stop moving, akin to a mouse input. I have not seen trackpad sensitivity that can sufficiently replace mouse input, but Valve is claiming to have reached unprecedented levels of trackpad precision. Really can't judge the capability of this controller until real-world feedback comes in, but at least conceptually, I can see this being a step-up from the controller input already popularized on Xbox and PS platforms.

Re:This actually looks really unusable

[Kelbear]

Actually, they can be speakers:

"This haptic capability provides a vital channel of information to the player - delivering in-game information about speed, boundaries, thresholds, textures, action confirmations, or any other events about which game designers want players to be aware. It is a higher-bandwidth haptic information channel than exists in any other consumer product that we know of.

As a parlour trick they can even play audio waveforms and function as speakers."

What wrong with a wireless keyboard and mouse?

[sinij]

What wrong with a wireless keyboard and mouse? PC crowd does not want a console controller, why try to force it?

Re:Ugh, cant they use a PS2/PS3 like controller?

[Stormwatch]

Are you kidding me? The Gamecube's controller is the best, and the Xbox's and the Dreamcast's controllers are fine too. Because they put the left analog stick in the right place, unlike the Playstation's godawful piece of shit of a controller.

Is Steam a viable alternative to a console?

[timeOday]

I currently have a Linux PC and a XBox 360 connected to my TV. Is Steam more of a console replacement, or a distribution method for PC-style games? (I.e. keyboard/mouse input and few co-op games). Does installing games on Linux under Steam actually work, or is it a nightmare of package dependencies that require an up-to-date install of a specific distro? Is there a good selection of split-screen games that are gamepad-friendly? I am getting a little tired of the XBox 360 low resolution, and it is feeling more and more limited without paying a subscription fee, which I won't do.

Re:Today's Slashvertisement brought to you by...

[hairyfeet]

I'd say its annoying because there are plenty of other worthy subjects in the firehose on any given day and instead of one of those we get a commercial.

But when it comes to SteamOS and the SteamBox there is a rotting elephant that nobody seems to be willing to talk about...how in the world are they gonna pull off functional DRM in a FOSS OS without running afoul of the GPL? Are they gonna do like Google did and sink a billion into making their own GPL V2 only fork so they can use the "TiVo Trick" of code signing the DRM? Are they gonna demand boards that have TPM so they can use it against the user? How are they gonna pull it off?

I have read some say they are gonna just do it "like they do Steam on Windows" but I don't think that will work with a FOSS OS as you can always get the underlying subsystems to "lie" to the program by simply making your own recompile, something not possible with either OSX or Windows. They also can't use the kernel hooks that past DRM systems like SecuROM and StarForce used for the same reason, one could recompile the kernel to bypass it. Not to mention there are plenty of Linux hackers that hate DRM on general principle and will probably do everything they can to undermine any program that uses DRM. We have also seen this attitude from several of the devs of Linux who I wouldn't be surprised if their "updates" mainly break SteamOS. As one told me when I pointed out having updates break drivers was stupid "I hope we break every non GPL driver constantly!" because he truly believed a broken OS that was "GPL Pure" was better than a functional one.

So as a system builder while I would like nothing more than for this to work, as i think win 8 is an abomination and MSFT has always treated us like red headed stepchildren between this and the fact that a good 90% of triple A games in the last 10 years have been DirectX only? I just don't see how its gonna work, somebody really needs to do an interview with valve and ask the hard hitting questions. Maybe they have an answer, maybe they have cooked up their own GPL V2 only fork, maybe they have bought a good chunk of the Wine guys and have them working on a "clicky clicky" simple version of wine to integrate with SteamOS, I just don't know but I would MUCH rather read how they are gonna solve these VERY difficult issues, not read an oversized commercial about yet another supposedly innovative controller.