The steam controller.............

You mean to tell me, those are not speakers?

 

Thumbsticks are great but compared to a mouse they are still pretty bad and unprecise. So I am eager to try Valve's solution. It seems like it could work really really good for 1st person shooters or racing games. But not so much for arcade style games like Streetfighter.

BUT Valve already stated that the controller will be fully customizable/hackable. Yes even it's hardware. So soon after release there will be the first controller mods. How this exactly works only time will tell.

 

I just remembered about the hacking side of things. With this thing being made to be hackable maybe some people will build some D pads and thumbstick mods for it. If they do then I'll be all over it.

 

Thinking about it, the more I look at it the more I see a lump of clay. Will definitely be interested to see what people do with this thing after release, granted first impressions weren't that good but this thing definitely has potential I reckon.

 

it doesn't look really good...

 

I like the look of this. Quite excited to try it.

 

It's obvious this controller is made to function as a keyboard/mouse replacement, and thus giving the best experience with games that work best with keyboard and mouse = majority of popular PC games. So for all the haters, be glad that one of the most influential companies for the PC market is experimenting with this, and for all other type of games just use a regular gamepad.

 

at first i thought wtf, but then, you have to play with it your self to see how good it is.
but i'm more intrested in these "AAA" steamos/linux announcments that valve said we should look out for.
because i wont be using steamos to stream my windows games, since streaming i guess just sucks and i will be switching back to linux anyway,
i only installed windows because of ffxiv but i'm playing it more on my ps3.

 

Well your thumbs are going to get raw after about an hour of play by rubbing those pads. Also there is no way your going to get precision movement that matches an actual analog stick on a pad like that.

Track pads might work well for laptops where you don't have to constantly move the arrow around but for a video game where movement is constant the concept doesn't work.

 

Precision movement and analog stick should never be said together.

 

Didn't Valve says they can indeed function as speakers?

I really think the Steam controller will have to be something you try before you can judge it, since it's so different from any other controller. The trackpad sounds like a bad idea, since trackpads on laptops suck balls, but this is Valve we're talking about. They know first person shooters, and they've obviously designed a controller that gives mouse and keyboard-like precision on a controller. And they seem to think that these trackpad things are a superior choice over thumbsticks. They did say there was some kind of haptic feedback on them, while would hopefully resolve the "drifting" that often happens with things like the virtual thumbsticks on mobile devices.

 

It depends on the game. This controller loos like it'll work fine for a ton of games in my steam library. It would render some others unplayable though. I'm not sure if one controller design would be "great" for all the games in my library... I know a lot of gaming on Steam skews towards FPS, but nothing can replace a keyboard & mouse for that anyway.

Remember, games released on Steam aren't really designed with a particular controller in mind (SteamOS, this thing & the rumored steambox are being made to address this). Maybe your customer has an XBOX controller, but maybe not. Certainly they have a keyboard and mouse though... Maybe now that this is out, some of the indie devs who release on Steam (and touch screen phones) will design FOR this instead of a traditional gamepad, so it will be a good experience.

 

I'm just worried, with my hands getting damp after 15 mins of gameplay on any console, that those trackpads are going to be a nightmare of fingers getting stuck.
Otherwise, good concept- they've put lots of buttons out there that you don't need to move to reach. What worries me about this is accidental presses.

I'm glad, though, that it isn't the controller you MUST use.

 

If you think about it, it will be great for FPS, and cater towards more PC oriented games. The design does look strange but its original. You have to give them credit for stepping outside the box.

 

If this is meant to be more like keyboard+mice then why its two trackpads instead of one and a Dpad?

WASD is a keyboard emulating a Dpad, its even on the left side like a Dpad is on a controller unlike the arrow keys which are on the right.

Exactly, an optical trackpad would be better and take less space too meaning it could have both trackpad and analog and let you switch to whichever you like the most

 

Dude that's creepy...

 

My initial reaction on seeing the picture of this thing was, "WTF?" But after reading a little more about it, it still seems pretty weird, but I'm withholding judgment until I get to try one myself. I've never liked trackpads very much, but perhaps the haptic feedback thing will improve that slightly. One thing occurred to me: how will this work with PC games that are ports of console games? At the moment, many PC gamers use Xbox 360 controllers and similar devices for such games. I could see this working with FPSes, sims, and maybe even racing games, but what about more traditional arcade-style games like fighters?

 

fighting games was one thing that popped into my head while first looking at the controller, it could work well, but on the other hand it may not, but again fighting games are probably not valves main concern / market, also you can still use a 360 controller / whatever you want. i'd really just like to try this out and see how it feels and functions

 

I really think everyone is thinking about this backwards. Again, if you try to design one controller that works for every genre of game in your library, you're going to end up with a controller that doesn't really work well for any of them.

If you are serious about a particular genre of game, you'll get a controller for it, and, if needed, some joy2key type of application to make things easier on devs i.e.:
FPS: Keyboard & mouse
Fighting game/shmup/other arcade style games: arcade stick

What other style of game really requires precise movement? I'm sure there are others...

Still, this controller looks good enough for everything else (games that we know about TODAY). In a way, not having buttons on the face means the dev is free to define their own "layout". If one action button is needed in the game, just touching anywhere on the button does that action. Divide it down into pieces from there, AND/OR allow for thumb gestures... Yes, we're missing the feedback of pushing a button down, but we've been passed that as an issue since most consumer electronics has some sort of "touchpad" feature on them.

Remember, different arcade games had different button layouts and input devices. Working with a pre-designed controller constrains how the devs can use it. It's not the other way around.