Valve Shows Off Steam's New Controller

Half of the people here don't seem to get it ... this is not a replacement for M/K, this is supposed to make M/K games playable with a controller if you want to. And to me that looked perfectly fine for Civ and Papers, Please ... and it looked like an improvement over analog sticks.

I've been gaming with a trackball for a while now and I can play competitively with it. I wonder if this controller will feel more natural for me because of this.

I just hope it's Dorito dust resistant.

If nothing else, this looks like a great way to control something like XBMC. It could be configured to use keyboard shortcuts to do most of the work with the mouse emulation fallback in case of a crash or other issues. It also could help with Big Picture Mode crashes, since it looks like you could start a game normally just fine with it.

I would also be interested to try this with older games. I've been thinking about playing Silent Storm again, and this seems like it might be a decent way to play a game like that on a couch.

I was expecting more of the velocity-based movement he was talking about. That's what I currently have set up for a few games using Xpadder and it works really well. Hopefully it will be implemented.

Vavle make to solve problem of no mouse with sofa and people are make fun for it? Even its not your taste or prefering, why is bad to make new control machine? Lets wait for it and then make a fun for it or not. Some people not happy even they get handsome bounty.

Valve machine is not for keyboards humping mouse kisser!!! OK?? Goooood.

civ demo looked like it needed a button to quick swap DPI (or whatever its called here).

finer control over turning speed is interesting, you can do really fast 180s. Overall looks ok, seems like theres a little too much swiping.

I'll give this a shot before I pass judgment on it, but so far it actually looks pretty good.

If Valve wanted to make a machine that played games on a TV, they had to do something to get better mouse input than analog sticks can give. That's what this is. I don't really want to play PC games from my couch so I won't need one. I'll already have an xbox controller for games that require analog sticks.

A nice demonstration but I won't know how the trackpads feel till I get my hands on it depending on how much the retail price is.

@donpixel: have you ever played with a mouse? The demo looks like it mimics the feel. It even had inertia when you swipe in a direction.

People keep comparing it to using a trackpad on Civ. I don't know about you, but I could not use my thumb on my trackpad. Well I could, but didn't cause it would make no sense. Using the thumb and in a more comfortable position would make a lot more pleasant. I do how ever think RTS's will be hard and impossible to play single player and multiplayer respectively. But I would never want to play SC2 on my couch anyway.

I think it looks good. Considering they are calling the swipe fps mechanic "legacy", for games that don't support controllers natively. You can get the normal analog move and hold from most games. Since they do support controllers.

Yeah, I'm a PC Gamer, you can't compare the dexterity of your wrist/arm with the one of your thumb. Have you tried to play Dota2 with a pad? Do you think using Photoshop with a pad is confortable? Have you wrestle with a pad to do Autodesk Maya work ?

I'm not saying this is not going to be a functional control, I'm just saying the Mouse is a precision input device, unlike what that control appears to be.

It sure looks interesting and I'm all for trying it... That said, I can't see giving up a mouse for Civ since, by the time you are close enough to read all the text, you are going to be within arms reach of the table your monitor is on.

A thing you don't have to buy, that introduces new ideas and technology to attempt to bridge the gap between the mouse and the gamepad, is a bad idea? It wont tank their stock or kill Steam so we can't play our games anymore. It's a great idea. Worst case scenario it just doesn't work as well as a regular gamepad for some games and you just plug an actual gamepad into your computer instead. That doesn't seem all that bad.

Looks dope. Can't wait to try it.

It's like they shoehorned the worst parts of PC controls into a console controller.

Allot better than i was imagining but still not convinced, probably wont be until i try it out.

And so... it's better...then neither...dot dot dot.

I can't help thinking that it's going to be a pretty expensive controller.

So stop you from being a monster?

People keep assuming Valve is taking this scorched earth policy with this controller. As if they are going to burn and throw away all other controller types and force you to use this alone. Guys, it's just a different controller, they just want it to work when K&M or other crap doesn't. Hopefully they are filling a niche or providing an alternative that can replace controllers that aren't well optimized or easily customizable on a PC.

Would a game feel better with a different controller? Than use that controller.Will this solve a problem that K&M or gamepad can't fix? Maybe let's hope. This only adds to our choices not take away, settle down.

I want to see a fighting game being played using this controller. It pretty much sucks on a standard controller but I'd be interested at least to see how you could set a game up.

@the_vein:

It was excruciatingly slow and awkward. By the time he got the targeting reticule on even a stationary target he would have been dead twice over against someone average playing with k&m. It was slower even then a proficient player with a controller, never mind a k&m environment (pc shooter like CS:GO).

You misunderstood me.

I didn't say a better alternative to K&M. What I meant was a viable/comparable one (that's what's generally meant by saying alternative, hence i didn't specify) one that is at least comfortable to use in those types of games. This still looks like a bad input method for those games.

Is it better then a regular controller for games that normally play with k&m? Maybe.

Would I ever use it as something comfortable in those games? Hell no. At least not how they have showed it so far, which may change as people have pointed out.

(PS: and really, I play games with k&m on the couch or even in bed perfectly fine, you just need a solid surface and wireless k&m)

As to where they have said this, second paragraph: http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-steam-controller-is-valve-s-third-announcement/1100-4751/

I'll be passing. But hey, if someone gets use out of this.. then that's good for them.

I will remain optimistic because I really want this to work. It's still hard to gauge how if this is a equal alternative to mouse and keyboard for some games.

to much scrolling still reminds me of a notebook trackpad

@donpixel: Agreed

Now, I know this thing is not a console, but a lot of really stupid people think it is. Imagine sony or MS making a controller that only works with 30% of the games on their platform. That'd be fun.

I dont think it looks that good, if others like it then good for htem. It just slow as fuck.

@donpixel: The guy did say that the controllers were fully configurable and that in the game play demonstration they were playing without any changes made. So there's that.

@nardak: It's for people who are using big picture mode or will be using a Steam Machine to play PC on their TV in a living room. Kind of hard to play with a keyboard and mouse when you are sitting on a couch 10 feet away from your computer.

I actually thought the level of control available in that CS:GO segment was pretty impressive. As someone who's played 100 and 100 of hours of CS I'd find it pretty difficult to tell whether someone was using a controller or a mouse & keyboard watching that. Usually you can tell instantly in those types of fps's.

I want this. Like, nowish.

Very interested to get my hands on this thing. The keyboard and mouse emulation mode that they shows in portal seems fairly functional, obviously not perfect but it might be good enough for games that don't support proper controllers.

SOLD

cool, looks like something you could use for grand strategy games, singleplayer games and turn based games.

This was a nice thing for Valve to do, but I feel like there's a bunch of intangibles here that I'm not going to "get" unless I use it for myself. I'd like to see how Valve intends to deal with configuration of the controller. Is it a separate steam app? Will it need configuration every time you pick up a game? Can it be adjusted on the fly i.e. "legacy" mode into 2-pad mouse control mode?

I don't know about this, but until you feel how it controls with your own hands it's hard to be certain.

Nice idea, giving a thumb the precision of a mouse hand... But I still think it needs about twice as many buttons on either side to actually be useful on its own.

The real benefit seems to be the controller's ability to work for PC games that were made to be played with KB+M. Cool idea, but there isn't a game in my Steam Library that I want to play on my HDTV that doesn't work well on a controller already.

Looks very promising. The CS:GO demo shows that holy shit is it so much better for aiming than analog sticks are.

Judging from half the comments, Valve thinks too highly of their audience, seeing as many people don't comprehend what this thing is even for.

So their new console will be like a pc right, but for games?

Meaning, it'll be like opening up Steam on a home console and playing games that used to be only playable on a computer?

Looks interesting, Wont work for online competetive play, but might replace my old xbox-360 controller

Using a track-pad on a controller as a mouse seems tedious and unappealing to me. It clearly gets the job done, but it isn't something that makes me excited about this controller.

Looks interesting, now that I see it in action. I would like to try this thing out.

Looks awful for shooters. Might be good for other games but I'd still use a mouse first. Games like Civ V have horrible couch interfaces anyways. Those games are designed to be played at a desk and just don't work from the couch. Whenever I try I can't read text on the screen.

I'm happy to see them doing something crazy but I just can't imagine this working in any way, for me at least.