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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.
Yup... and every time you go to use it, it pauses for a couple minutes while it downloads a new patch, before allowing you to play! "While you wait for your controller to be updated, please look at this webpage with a bunch of vaguely-related advertisements and a PR release by the developer." (-_-) What ever happened to just turning on the console and, you know, playing the game that worked just fine last night when you went to bed? I know, I know... it's a feature...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I am tired of seeing this obvious truth treated as trolling. It's not trolling. Mod up, please.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
My computer has a perfectly good couple of monitors, why would I want to not use those to game on?
Why would I want to take over the TV so that nobody else in the house can use it to watch TV?
Even though you hid behind posting as an AC and started at zero you will likely be modded down. Too many fanboys here who pay Steam don't like their stupidity pointed out. And no, I'll never buy a Steam DRMed piece of software either. Have used it for some free demos, and had to install it to update a previously purchased DRM free copy of the original Halflife (upgrade now required for on-line play). But I completely agree that Supporting Steam is supporting DRM, and a very unwise thing for a supposedly intelligent on-line community to do.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This is a terrible mistake. As has been demonstrated with smartphones, touch devices are unusable.
People want sticks and directional pads.
The placement of most of the buttons is also terribly awkward.