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The trackpads are pretty useless on their own but when combined with the virtual menu system in steam they become S+ tier
Hmm, so worthless for GOG?
Just add the GOG games to Steam. When you give them the same names as in Steam you can even use community layouts. That way even games that aren’t on Steam have community layouts.
Yo can still use steaminput I think
Definitely picking this up. I’m always interested in exploring new avenues in ergonomics. I got the original Steam controller when it came out. I thought it was an admirable first attempt but wasn’t quite there yet. Particularly I thought the lack of dual analog sticks and a true D-pad was a problem, all of which seem to have been solved here.
Yeah it’s already a tried and true layout from the steam deck, except with hopefully better grip buttons (I just find the grips to be a little difficult to use with how stiff they are).
I want this controller but split down the center so I can walk with them on a treadmill. There are joycons and third party joycons but none that I’ve found with the little track pads. That’d be HUGE.
linus tech tips did a video on this
The Open Split Deck is what the above commenter is referring to! Very cool project that is exactly what I’m looking for…just not for sale yet lol!
I hope that the Frame controllers will be sold separately. Of course they don’t have trackpads either.
It’s a shame that split controllers haven’t caught on. Gaming is so much more relaxed when you aren’t forced to have your hands together. I loved that since the Wii. But I haven’t seen a split controller that I really like.
Does anyone know if it functions as a normal xinput controller on windows without using steam?
The Controller requires Steam or the Steam Link app. I tested it on GeForce Now via my iPhone and while it did connect over Bluetooth
That doesn’t bode well, but thats also on an iphone.
I have the old steam controllers and they behave like a mouse on my computers if steam isn’t running. Could be the same thing with the new ones.
According to gamers nexus that is the case.
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While I kinda understand the steep price, not being able to use with other than Steam is a deal breaker for me. Yes, you can create shortcuts inside Steam and use the controller like that probably but still. On the other hand, I can use the old Steam controller even on a browser alongside with the rest of my OS.
Someone will make it work within a few weeks.
I guarantee you that there’ll be a no-steam driver for this in a matter of months.
I think it’s only Windows and Mac that are like that. Linux you can install just the steam-devices package for Valve hardware drivers.
The steam-devices package is just udev rules and the drivers are already built into the kernel, right? So there’s a good chance you’ll just already have the drivers!
(…in theory. Debian critters may want to run testing+unstable rather than stable for the next while, if the new steam controller needs specially written drivers that won’t be in current stable.)
– Frost
Indeed, and to expand a bit on this, it’s very likely that the drivers have been in the kernel for a while, after all the Steam Deck has the exact same inputs so it’s very likely that it uses the same driver.
Probably. I haven’t looked that deep. I only know that Steam Flatpak asks me to install the steam-devices package from my distro for device support until I do.
Yeah, thinking about how SteamOS works, I think we might actually be in the clear.
Good to hear, good to hear.
fuck em
That’s pretty huge to me too. My main use would be with Moonlight, an open source version of Steam Link, and if it can’t connect to that Android TV to begin with, it’s worthless.
Strange that the Xbox and PlayStation controllers are now more open and reusable.
I find it interesting that there appears to be a line (kids that grew up with a Nintendo DS) where people went from loving membrane buttons to hating membrane buttons.
To me, membrane buttons are an absolute Pro.
Some membranes feel like mush, the buttons have WAY TOO MUCH travel, and the buttons wiggle as you try to mount them.
Then there are micro switches that immediately give my fingers cramps, click louder than a Cherry Blue switch, and you can never tell if you’ve actually pressed it or not.
For posterity, I prefer membranes as well.
I’d be fine with membrane switches if there were split D-pad options for them. Don’t mind them for buttons, but ever since I got a Stadia controller, I haven’t looked back at membranes for D-pads.
And depending on what you play, membrane controller D-pads wear out unevenly - i had to toss my “Dead Cells”-Controller into my “backup hardware” bin because of the right side input being FAR more easy to press than the left side which messed up more than a few runs - to be fair it took around 6-700hrs of playtime to get there, but it does happen.
Right?! Not to mention the issue with dual inputs when rocking one direction back and forth on the d-pad. Noticed it as I was playing Hollow Knight on my OG Switch with the Switch Pro Controller’s infamous D-pad, which the Switch 2 Pro Controller didn’t even bother fixing.
I went with microswitch buttons for my current controller (cyclone pro) and I honestly regretted it, they feel harder to press and especially hard to spam fast compared to membrane.
It costs $99/€99/£85/$149 AUD
This is funny, because amer*can currency is nowhere near strong enough to be comparable to EUR now
Yeah, but because the price in the US is pre-tax the real price is around $108 which is still less than €99 but not by that much. Also, yeah USD is weakened but that also means people there are making less money so they have less purchasing power, it’s common for companies to price the same thing lower on low-income countries and higher on high-income ones to compensate.
it doesn’t make sense to put only one price without tax
americans have less purchasing power than before not than europeans
it doesn’t make sense to put only one price without tax
That’s done because that’s the norm in the USA, if you advertise a price without tax on Europe you will be legally bound to sell at that price.
americans have less purchasing power than before not than europeans
I didn’t meant to imply that Americans have less purchasing power than Europeans (although they might, I don’t know) but rather than it’s common for companies to price things differently according to purchasing power and while the dollar did lose power that also means it’s people lost purchasing power so it makes sense to keep it the same price instead of increasing it to compensate as otherwise they might loose sales.
Also something that might not occur to Europeans (and didn’t to me when I first visited the US) is that different states each have their own tax laws and can set the tax rate independently.
Which contributes to why it’s usual to show price before tax.
I hate it personally, but that’s how it is.
That’s a stupid argument, and it’s more of a thing Americans say to try to convince themselves that their system makes sense. Taxes are also different in different EU countries, some companies have different prices on different countries because of it, while others prefer to advertise to the whole community as a single market. Regardless, the price they advertise is the price you pay, otherwise it’s called false advertising.
American prices reflect the lower purchasing power within the US interior because pricing has to be the same across state lines (because otherwise people would take advantage of state discounts, similar to how people take advantage of the no-VAT states). The US even has programs where banks give free money (usually 100-300$) to open accounts in order to incentivize people to spend and churn their financial institutions.
A huge chunk of the American economy is predicated on uneducated people being goaded into overspending by giving them extra money they think they can spend on non-necessities. For example: a bank gives you 100$ for opening an account, so you buy a 150$ sofa using their credit card, predicated on the fact that sofa purchase wouldn’t’ve occurred without the stimulus. Because financial literacy is so low in the US, the bank makes a net profit because a large enough cohort of credit users won’t pay their balances at the end of the month and end up paying 25% interest (which is roughly the interest charged on these credit cards).
I’m lower middle class, and I absolutely take advantage of my vacation times to fly to or near VAT-free states to buy big ticket electronics and similar. If I could stack that and fly to Montana for no VAT and “poor state” pricing, I absolutely would.
For reference, $99 are like 85€ nowadays.
Except EU price has VAT included
Oh, I didn’t know that.
So they earn less by each sold controller in European countries with higher VAT?
It seems so.
Thanks Obama
99€ is with tax and 99$ is pre-tax? No?
Yes
kinda-ish, but why is one price sans tax and the others with it
Cuz other countries have strong consumer laws that make it so the price you see is the price you pay. Whereas here in the US we like to hide things like taxes and fees to 1. Make consumers overspend and 2. Make consumers extremely aware of the taxes they pay so that anytime reducing taxes on the rich comes up they think “yeah, I hate taxes, let’s lower them!”
Make consumers extremely aware of the taxes they pay so that anytime reducing taxes on the rich comes up they think “yeah, I hate taxes, let’s lower them!”
This is the answer.
Polling rate is a hit of a bummer, but then again the Xbox Elite controllers I’ve been using have a lower polling rate and I haven’t really noticed - probably because I’d never use a controller for anything competitive.
Looking forward to clicky switch upgrade kits, love the ones I have for Steam Deck :)
With regards to the polling rate, I wouldnt worry about it. Gaming Nexus did a deep dive into the latency of the controller, and it is really good. Which is going to be signicicantly more important that the minute difference you would get from increasing polling rate over 250hz.
A polling rate of 250Hz means that the average latency added due to polling is 2ms. A polling rate of 1000Hz would mean an average of 0.5ms added latency.
Even on a 240Hz screen, the extra latency caused by the polling rate will most likely not amount to even 1 frame of extra delay compared to what you’d get with a polling rate of 1000Hz.
Bluetooth latency is likely going to be one order of magnitude greater than that. I wouldn’t worry about polling rate honestly.
With the trackpads it kinda changes things, I have the og Steam Controller and it polls at 125Hz which is noticeably sluggish on a 240Hz screen. The same might apply here for people using even higher refresh rates (360Hz and 240/480Hz dual mode are getting pretty common), though not nearly to the same extent. Just something to keep in mind.
Are there even any controllers with a higher polling rate, though ?
8BitDo Ultimate 2 Controller lineup is at 1000hz
Gamesir G7 Pro 8k and Razer Wolverine V3 go up to 8000hz
Checked GameSir and it says their WIRED controllers are 8000 Hz. That’s cool I guess but wired + gyro is incredibly annoying to use, so not for me.
Oh okay ! I didn’t even consider third party brands, it seems interesting but as far as I have seen third party controllers never support all of the first party features, do they ?
Also, gyro is a must have, and afaik the new steam controller will have the highest poll rate gyro ever if it’s 250Hz
Looks fantastic!
I cant pay 100$ for a single controller. Even if it seems like its everything I could want. Just cant spend that much.
I was pretty excited for this controlled but $149 CAD is too much for me.
I’ll be buying it when it goes for sale. Until then, my current peripherals work just fine
Honestly I’ve never found a game where the track pads on the steam deck were ever actually… Useful compared to the normal thumbsticks. Or any games where they actually worked decently as a track pad for a cursor.
Genuinely what exactly is the point of them?
People seem to like the idea of just having to use when they need mouse input instead of having to grab a mouse or using the touchpads to type something quickly over grabbing a keyboard. Useful if you are gaming in the living room, so more a convenience.
For gameplay others have liked setting up touch menus. Like for retroarch on the Steam Deck I set up a touch menu with short cuts to bring up the menu, select save states, rewind and fast forward.
And in my case I actually prefer to use the touchpads as primary inputs in FPS titles like The Finals. I set up the right touchpad so gyro is activated on touch, swiping to quickly turn, and setting up a dpad modeshift to act as a facebutton replacement by expanding the clicks from 1 to 5. So lets me not have to take my thumb off the right pad.
Not sure the ergonomics of the new Steam Controller will be good for dual pad gaming though, since didn’t find myself finding the Deck touchpads comfortable for that use case do to them being lower than the OG Steam Controller.
Aiming is way more precise. Not as good as motion aim + Joystick, but there is also no other controller that can dynamically activate motion aim depending on how you touch the Joystick.
It’s essential for navigating menus and windows. Both on a desktop or browser, as well as in any game that clearly has a layout for use with a mouse. I played GuilWars2 on my SteamDeck just fine, thanks to the trackpad (and abundance of modifier keys).
Absolutely essential in Strategy games, where you have to select one of multiple units, pick fields … I don’t get, how people can do this with a Joystick. I know, some of the games are available on console too and work completely with joystic, but it’s just so cumbersome and unintuitive, compared to the trackpad.
What I also used in Guildwars, is the radial menu from Steam, to bind hotkeys to nested menu entries, easy to navigate on the otherwise unused left trackpad. I basically went in and added something like that to most games I play on the Deck.
Opus Magnum, Dwarf Fortress, Noita, Rim World… so many games would be unplayable on Steam Deck without the track pads.
I’ve gotten use out of it in minecraft as a numpad. Add 9 buttons, mapped to 1-9, and you can get to any item in your hotbar without shoulder button spam. It’s basically the only way I use it but most of my steam deck hours are in minecraft so it balances out.
Could not disagree more. Literally any game with mouse input is 1000x more playable
personally I like them a lot for cursors, it takes some getting used to but ig I’ve used laptop track pads a lot and I find it very comfortable and natural to use my thumb for it. definitely haven’t used it much for e.g. camera control in a 3d game though, feels awkward every time I’ve tried.
I wouldn’t be able to play factorio without them. I also like to make touch menus for things
I play a ton of mouse driven games that don’t have gamepad support and it works great there. I would not even consider emulating the mouse with regular sticks, but with touchpad it’s very comfortable
Any game which uses the mouse as it’s main use, Abu game which needs buttons and hotkeys, Abu game which uses analogue input. I don’t think you’ve learned how to use it properly, and that’s okay but something to work on.
I use it for every first person game for example. It often requires some configuration effort to make it feel great. It’s a lot more precise and direct than sticks, especially when combined with gyro that activates on touch.
If you don’t want to spend time configuring control schemes and you don’t want trackpads or touch sensitive sticks, you’re much better off with a cheaper alternative.
Since i play mainly racing games with gyro and racing pedals, I’m seriously considering this one. More so because I’m using OG steam controller as my main controller.
You just hold your arms straight out and the vibrating controller gives you a sense of the road?
No, just hold it in my lap, vibration doesn’t work usually. I have a solid wheel but i need to mount it and I don’t have 2-3 hours to sink into racing. pedals are the main advantage when racing so I have load cell ones, and IMO force feedback is a nice gimmick, good for immersion. On that note, I’m looking to buy a gamepad with ffb wheel that Gamesir is planning to put out this year.
Fuck. I was hoping to buy 4 for my kids. Imagine 5-8 y/o holding $400 in their hands.
each would be holding $99, innit?
They clearly meant the cumulative age when two of the four children are holding the controllers together (must be a new Gen Alpha & Beta activity). The youngest child is 2 years old, the twins are 3 years old and the big boss is already 5 years old. There is no other reasonable way to interpret this.
I meant my 2 kids and 2 friends of them. Edited for clarity. 4 kids = 400 USD. Pray they don’t throw a tantrum.
Maybe they’re an octopus.
More, because plus tax!
2 sons + 2 friends of them = 4 controllers.
The controller costs 1/4 of what I paid for my Steam Deck. Crazy.
That is quite a lot comparatively, although the more you add, the shared costs dilute more. Plus, we have to take into account the Deck is/was sold with an almost insignificant profit margin.
Yeah, they undersold it for sure. I suppose there’s less reason for Valve to do so with the controller, and the days of budget option electronics are pretty much gone anyway.
I’m about to buy two, let’s gooooo
Probably could’ve saved the consumer $15-20 if they just used a typical type C charging port and not a proprietary connection.
