Steam Controller Delayed to 2015

[rembrandtqeinstein]

The most perfect controller ever conceived is the dual shock 2. All other controllers pale in comparison.

I don't want god damn analog triggers with travel time on the shoulders. I want buttons I can mash.

XCOM proved you can do strategy games just fine with the controller, just need to be creative with your interface.

The valve controller with touchpads instead of sticks is an abortion. Have they even tried to play "virtual stick" games on their phones? They are universally terrible, with occasionally ranging into the "not so abysally awful you stop immediately" territory.

 

[Grimh]

Wow! A whole 20 posts before someone complained about it having track pads instead of just being yet another variant of the controllers we already have! I think that may be a new record.

It's good that they're not rushing it. I do want to play some of the PC games that don't have controller support infront of my TV but if the controller sucks then that's not gonna happen. So don't screw it up Valve.

 

[flying_whimsy]

Even controllers now? This year is gonna end in July then all the rest of the months will be delayed till 2015.

That got a good chuckle out of me.

OT: I'm a little bummed by this, as I really want a steam controller. Sony's refusal to make their playstation controllers work on pcs has left with that damn 360 controller and I hate the thing. I think the steam controller looks really promising (and if it works as advertised might be a game changer in the same way analog sticks were), but if they keep delaying like this it's really going to hurt the steambox roll out.

 

[elvor0]

The most perfect controller ever conceived is the dual shock 2. All other controllers pale in comparison.

I don't want god damn analog triggers with travel time on the shoulders. I want buttons I can mash.

XCOM proved you can do strategy games just fine with the controller, just need to be creative with your interface.

The valve controller with touchpads instead of sticks is an abortion. Have they even tried to play "virtual stick" games on their phones? They are universally terrible, with occasionally ranging into the "not so abysally awful you stop immediately" territory.

True, but XCOM is a turned based strategy, yeah it does play very well with a pad, I can still do everything quicker with a mouse, but because it's turned based, you can take as long as you want to do anything. Real Time Strategies would still have the same problem. It's not even the first SRPG to do it, Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics came out waaaay before on the PS1, before that we had Shining Force on the Sega, and I'm sure there are other examples, SRPGs have been on the console for ages. Whats on the Valve Controller, if it's successful would be the middle ground between the two, not as good as a mouse, but a damn site better than a stick for RTS and FPS. If it does what's advertised, it could even replace sticks, cos sticks are way too limiting.

Also, what's on the valve controller is a new thing, or semi new at least, it's designed to give you haptic feedback and whatnot, it's different from a traditional laptop trackpad or a phone touchscreen. Even if it didn't give you /active/ feed back, there's bumps and passive feedback on the pads, it's not smooth.

I mean it could be terrible, but it's certainly something different, so we can't tell till we've used it.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

You know what would be absolutely ballsy? The delay coinciding with finishing work on HL3 or L4D3, so that one or both of those games can launch with the Steam Machine and work better (or be exclusive) to SteamOS. It was absolutely insane back in the day that we had to install Steam in order to play HL2, but that was still on Windows, so who knows.

I'm still curious about the size of this market that wants a PC, doesn't want to build one, and wants to have it in their living room and feature a console-ish UI. There's likely to be frustration when the GPU in the model a consumer bought doesn't hold up to a new release, and they didn't want to build a PC so they don't want to change out the GPU in their Steam Box either. Not to mention that a very small portion of PC games have native Linux/SteamOS support. I dunno, Valve are crazy people but it's made them money in the past.

I got off track a bit...the controller can certainly be interesting. I love having triggers and rumble on my gamepad, and prefer the stick to WASD movement, but absolutely love the mouse for aiming/camera as well as the wheel. If these haptic touchpad deals can offer a level of precision even close to that of a mouse, I wouldn't be using KB&M except for very specific circumstances.

 

[Vigormortis]

First, the button seem too far apart on the steam controller, second the playstation dpad button are actually link together under the cover of the controller, the steam controller one look more like simple button, which make it harder to get proper diagonal input.

The Playstation d-pad buttons may be "linked" by a plastic bar underneath but, in both a tactic input sense and in how the controller itself picks up the input commands on the circuit board, that d-pad functions in the same way 4 separate buttons do. Your thumb is literally just pressing one or more individual buttons.

C'mon dude there is no possible way in any tangible dimension anyone can comfortably pivot their thumb against the 4 round directional buttons that Valve has so far provided. The Playstation d-pad buttons just by their very shape and proximity lend itself to easy handling. So does Nintendo's d-pad though I understand theirs is patented. The Xbox 360 d-pad kind of sucks but at least I can struggle to make it work accurately but you can't seriously look at Valves set up and tell me that those little round separated buttons make for a practical d-pad. They will have to at least make those buttons longer to make a practical difference.

I'm looking forward to everything else about this controller but still hope they update that d-pad lay out. And if those buttons aren't suppose to be a d-pad then I may as well stick with what I'm using now.

But as I said, the Playstation d-pad is, functionally and practically, nothing more than four separate buttons. So at worst the Steam configuration is no worse than the Playstation's. Especially when considering the distance between the buttons of the former and the input contact points on the circuit board for the latter.

The buttons themselves may look farther apart but, again, given the contact points on the circuit board and the functional "touch zones" of the d-pad itself on the Playstation controller, the two likely function the same.

Now, if one doesn't like the Playstation d-pad than I can understand the criticism of the Steam controller version. But for me, having used similar d-pad configuration as seen on the Steam controller (and having had no issues in using them), I think I will be comfortable with the Steam controllers configuration. Some may not, and I understand that, but that's not really a sign of an inherent "flaw" in the controller's design. No controller is suited for comfort and ease-of-use for every user.

This is not to say the Steam controller configuration will function flawlessly as a direction input method. It may not. And for all I know it's input response time is woefully slow, making it virtually useless. But until we get one in our hands judging it to be inherently flawed by design, when it's design mimics currently favored d-pad configurations, just doesn't make sense to me.

I could very well be wrong. And I'll gladly eat my slice of humble pie if I am. For now, though, the "d-pad debate" is the one criticism I don't get.

Some feedback from those few that have had a go at the current iteration of the controller would probably help.