It’s not the clearest photo, but it clearly has both 2 thumb sticks and 2 track pads.
“…it clearly has both 2 thumb sticks and 2 track pads.”
Hell yes, I am very bullish on the two thumb sticks and two touchpads being the controller format that will establish the steam deck/handheld gaming pc as the future of gamepads.
It won’t necessarily be a quick, all at once change, but that is because it is a strategic longterm play to reframe what a gamepad is, what its limitations are, and what kind of games can be played with a gamepad.
It will be the kind of thing people look back and point to as the beginning of the whole industry shifting into a new paradigm where playing cool indie games with a gamepad is something people associate with pc gaming first, console gaming second.
They just better have a gyro sensor in there too!
WOOOOOOOO
what 650g shape are you holding for an hour that doesn’t cause wrist pain?
SadleyItsBradley is the bane of every developer trying to keep a secret.
God dammit, why will nobody bring back 6 button pads? I’m so sick and tired of having to buy a separate controller just for fighting games. This controller would be absolutely perfect if it just had two more buttons…
Not the same thing, but the steam input allows you to make virtual buttons and assign them to the area of a touchpad.
Well that’s better than nothing so I’ll take it.
I’m just glad that Valve is bringing back the Steam controller. So sick and tired of boring, uninnovative Xbox and Playstation controllers. I like the idea of toggle switches under the controller that aren’t just remaps of existing buttons, and actually usable touchpads. I hope the left stick and D-pad are hot-swappable in the final version, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I’ve pretty much been asking for a steam deck without a screen, so if this leak is accurate than I for one am fucking STOKED
It could just be my screen, but that render is hard AF to decipher. Here’s a quick n dirty curves manipulation to get better contrast.
Those trackpads better have damn good palm reject because getting to those thumbsticks without brushing the trackpads will be impossible for many people.
The steam deck already does in my experience!
The steam deck does
People were saying that about the steam deck before it came out. Maybe some people have had issues, but anecdotally I’ve literally never heard one complaint about that from someone who actually used the device. The way the joystick is elevated above the pad your palm really shouldn’t touch it
Aside from I don’t think that will actually be an issue, the thumb sticks are likely to have touch sensitivity on top like the steam deck ones have. So they can just disable the TouchPad anytime the thumb stick is being touched.
Again, though. I don’t think it will be an issue with your palms.
Thank you - I couldn’t see the buttons between the track pads before. Does anyone have an idea what that might be?
if its the same as steamdeck, those are the steam and … (status) overlay buttons.
Awww, poor guy looks sad
Anyone got a non-xitter copy of this news?
Thank you kind person.
Looks like they want to bring back the DukeI miss the duke
You’re in luck. The Steam Duke is coming our way!
Can someone put some blush marks and eye dots on it?
I shouldn’t quit my day jobfrom xitter:
There will probably be gamingonlinux/steamdeckhq articles in the morning, but for now this is the only source.
I love my Steam Controller. I still use it majority of the time over my playstation, nintendo, and xbox controllers because of the touchpads.
But, I didn’t like using the touchpads on the Deck because of the size, shape, and orientation making it a regression for maining the touchpads for the games I play. So not surprised by the leak, since Valve would obviously be better off focusing on making the ergonomics better for joystick users than touchpad users. Still let down because it’ll mean for touchpad focused users like me Steam Controller is the only touchpad centric controller on the market with great ergonomics, size with 40mm concave pads, and circular shape for more consistent swipes.
But, it is discontinued and the gyro feels aged compared to the options out there. Will still be using it though from the looks of it for years to come hoping for an eventual dual pad centric controller from some niche group.
It would be cool if they made the next steam controller have two versions which are exactly the same both with two touchpads and with two with joysticks except one has the touchpads in the prime ergonomic spot on top the other with the two joysticks in the prime ergonomic spot.
I imagine a decent amount of people would like the “subpar” placement of their preferred inputs too because there is such a variety of hand shapes and sizes.
I would be so happy if that happened, but I think Valve has moved away from touchpad centric layouts. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t touchpad enthusiasts involved
There’s little signs here and there with the placement and shape, but also signs that people at Valve don’t use stuff like dpad modeshift with an inverted outering bind for 5 click inputs over the default 1 click that long time Steam Controllers love. With the biggest sign coming from not separating soft press and regular click for the touchpads in the new Steam Input.
Leading to having to use stuff like action layers on the Deck because regular click pressure can’t be set without soft press to set up the touchpad for 5 click functions. Not ideal with how action layers can sometimes get stuck between layers. https://imgur.com/a/b1wyHEK
Ok clearly you know more about this than me, but I grew up using an xbox controller, I prefer it over touchpads by 1000% percent (with gyro on) but the touchpads are still integral to all of the complex steam deck bindings I have used and those I have made myself. Whether the touchpads are used for configurable virtual menus or as mouse and movement inputs, people are heavily using the touchpads. I hope they dont mess it up for touchpad users though.
Give us the circle pads back! Just keep making the steam controller actually, with another back paddle, hall effect stick… Damn squares.
Honestly not having a dpad and second thumbstick is a deal breaker for me on the original steam controller, it means that most games with built in controller support don’t work well without switching to a custom or community layout. I think having a “normal” controller layout + trackpads/etc is necessary for the controller to succeed.
Additionally, having this layout means it will match the Steam Deck, which should make all control profiles interchangable.
“Additionally, having this layout means it will match the Steam Deck, which should make all control profiles interchangable.”
Additionally an order of magnitude more indie devs who don’t have the cash for a steam deck could pick up used/new steam controllers for not too money and that will inveitably lead to an order of magnitude more devs actually trying out their game using steam deck control schemes and I think that will be hard to overstate in impact longterm on gaming… especially because transformative, revolutionary new gaming experiences almost exclusively come from these kinds of developers.
Look at the anemic evolution of VR games, it is because the developers who could innovate and grow the medium with the next big VR hit is sitting in the bedroom of their parents house making a different game because neither them or any of their friends can afford VR goggles.
Square pads are where it’s at until you start playing on a round TV screen. Besides, it’s way easier to set up hockey buttons in a square Touch Pad than a round one.
I was going to say that if you wanted one they’re cheap on eBay, but after checking, they’re $50+
Consider yourself lucky you can even find the damn things, where I live they simply don’t exist on the used market.
I’m getting ready to eat the bullshit import taxes and buy the SC2 as soon as it drops, I’m so pissed I missed out on v1 😒
I love it. Absolutely buying one.
Looks good. I just hope they bring back two-stage triggers, as those are missing from the Steam Deck.
What’s a two-stage trigger? Analogue until it’s all the way down, then a click (like the GameCube)?
This is correct, linear trigger with a click at the end very useful in desktop mode to have it slow the mouse movement with a trigger pull and then the trigger click for the mouse click.
You haven’t just been using the TouchPads in desktop mode?
The Deck triggers don’t have a physical switch at the end, but Steam Input does have soft pull and full pull mappings as well as settings to change when and how they activate.
Not quite the same as you have no tactile feed back on when you are about to enter the full pull part.
Oh that’s cool, I’d not even considered using it to control a mouse
I got an 8bitdo controller (ultimate 2C or whatever), and it feels really nice. Except the triggers are not two-stage. And it’s smaller.
Makes sense that it would match the inputs on the Steam Deck.
This thing looks almost as big as The Duke.
This seems like a prototype that they can make using the parts from the current deck.
I’m not sure the two square pads make sense on an actual controller, and I feel like those thumbsticks would be just out of comfortable reach.
I remember seeing the Steam Deck and thinking “the button placement is really weird, none of this looks comfortable”. Then when I took it in my hands for the first time, everything made sense.
It mostly does.
As someone with big hands, I can’t use the touchpads comfortably without scooting my grip downwards in a way that makes it precarious and less than comfortable.
I have a similar problem with the Index controllers. My thumb is too long to comfortably rest on any of the controls if I grip the grip where you’re supposed to to be able to strap your hand in.
Good economics is supposed to work for everyone, and I’ve yet to try a valve hardware product that fully pulls it off. Maybe the first controller did, but I haven’t tried that one.
It seems to me like the thumbsticks are in the same ergonomic location as on a Playstation controller, and the trackpads are just in the empty space that would otherwise be there. I’m fully into it even if this is what it looks like when complete
To me it looks like they’ve shoved the joysticks up where the trackpad is on playstation controllers. If they haven’t, that’s even worse.
There’s nothing below the joysticks on the playstation controller, because that area isn’t within comfortable reach for your thumbs.
Sure you can put stuff there, but bending your fingers there isn’t fun. That’s already true for some users when using the trackpads on the deck.
I’m a big Steam Controller trackpad user, and I already nearly never use my Deck trackpads because they’re too low down. This new one just looks like a normal controller with extra bulk, and nonsense in the area no controller except the N64 used because it’s not where most people grow fingers. I guess it’ll at least have paddles, but they’re hardly a unique feature these days. I really just wanted the existing one again, but with more paddles, an option for an integrated battery, USB-C instead of micro B, and an official supply of replacement thumbsticks instead of having to bodge in 8bitdo ones that aren’t quite the same shape.
I can understand where you’re coming from, but this is realistically a better option for Valve and most consumers right now.
When Valve made the original Steam Controller they were trying to kickstart the Steam Box, which at the time played PC games that were not optimized for controller input on a TV. They needed to have a very outside the box contoller to accomplish this, and so they gave the Steam Controller a try. The touchpad inputs with enough custom mapping really were revolutionary, but only for a small crowd that wanted to play Sim City on their TV.
Nowadays, every game has standard controller input. Trying to get people who are used to the joysticks to switch to virtual trackpads is a non starter, even if it could be technically superior in some circumstances. The compromise is what we have now, a full controller layout with touchpads as extras, to maintain that backward compatibility with old PC games. I think it’s the right decision, and this is personally the controller I’ve been waiting for.
I’d love to see Steam re-make the old Steam Controller to give old fans a replacement, and I hope they do someday, but they have to pick their battles as they certainly wouldn’t sell in any volume. In a previous quest for a perfect controller I came across an open source 3D printed one called the Alpakka. Maybe DIY or a startup indie company will pick up the torch where Valve left off to give a true replacement? I hope so because the right controller for the right job is a wonderful thing.
That’s reasonable, but the market’s already flooded with generic controllers at various price points and degrees of quality. If the idea’s to make money, the new design won’t do brilliantly as things like the awkwardly-placed trackpads will increase manufacturing costs without being a killer feature that makes most people prefer to spend more on this particular controller. If the idea’s to make something viable that hadn’t been before (which is what Valve normally seem to go for), then this isn’t serving the discontinued Steam Controller’s niche as effectively as the original did, and isn’t serving any new niche, either.
By the way, the thing they were trying at the same time as the original Steam Controller was the Steam Machine, not the Steam Box. It also kind of did work, as the couch PC gaming part mostly happened, but it took a decade of improvements to Proton and abandoning third-party hardware manufacturers before Linux-based console-like PCs became viable in the form of the Steam Deck. Ten years ago, nearly no games ran under Linux, and all the Steam Machine manufacturers were just changing the logo on one of their existing prebuilts and charging an extra $100 not to install Windows on it, so you were better off with any other desktop.
You’re right, it was called the Steam Machine, my mistake. I honestly don’t think it was very influential in pushing Linux gaming forward, it was a first attempt that was ahead of it’s time and Valve kept after it.
The market is flooded with various controllers, but they’re all basically the same. I think what Valve is going for here is not really a new controller to take the world by storm, but a companion controller to help sell the Steam Deck. In order for it to be a true companion it must match all the inputs the SD had so people don’t have to change their bindings. I play the SD docked and I have to say switching between an Xbox and SC depending on the game and adapting my bindings is annoying when it all just works on the native controls.
When Valve made the SC they were starting from scratch and went with an ambitious design, and let’s be frank, no one but a small niche of people liked it because they had grown up with thumbsticks and were unwilling to relearn. With the SD they compromised with both input schemes, which I have to say we need to be grateful for. Look at all the SD competitors and they all ditched trackpads to appeal to the general market. Valve could have done this too.
So largely I agree with you, it would be nice to have a SC 2.0, but I honestly don’t think this new leaked one will sell all that well. It’s just a companion to sell Decks and I’m grateful they are willing to try that.
Oddly, I almost exclusively use the trackpads on my deck. I tend to play mainly mouse-driven games.
Looks about the same layout as the steam deck, and it’s great on there. Dunno about the pads not being squared up, though. Dunno that I would like that, even if it would make the pads easier to reach, I still might rather have them squared up.
Or since they are right next to each other, it could be just one big touch surface.
The deck isn’t great, it works for some people, and is still really good for the rest, but the touch pads are pretty awkward for a lot of us. If the new valve controllers ergonomics are equivalent to the deck, it won’t be worth ditching the DS5 for me.
