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.
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.)
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.
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.
Are they? I bought a xbox pro controller for well over 100 dollars and i have to use it wired on my pc because i don’t have a xbox dongle that they don’t sell anymore
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.
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
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.
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.
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!”
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.
Scoring only 3.5 for software is pretty ridiculous, since Steam runs in every major desktop OS and SteamInput is crazy customizable. Most dedicated software for devices is either Windows-only or hot garbage (or both).
“I don’t want a steam account” should be perfectly justifiable reason in itself. There is no technical reason why they can’t split up steam input from the steam client for base functionality.
Yeah, if Sony sold you a controller that requires playstation everyone would be up in arms… Ah, no, bad example, their controllers do require playstation and it is an open source driver that makes them work… I know! If Microsoft sold you a controller that requires Windows everyone would be up in arms… Ah, no, bad example, they already do and it’s an open source driver that allows it to work outside of it… I guess this is just more of the same? Except (I still don’t have mine so can’t fully confirm but would be surprised if it didn’t) the steam controller probably works just like a regular controller outside of Steam, you just lose SteamInput which is very important for this controller.
Supposedly the new Steam Controller will work similar to the Steam Deck. By default it acts as mouse + keyboard. On Linux the Steam Deck Controller can act as a gamepad when holding down the start button. Hopefully the new Controller uses the same driver.
But so far there is no Windows driver so they are stuck in keyboard+mouse mode.
I have been thinking about this for a while, and I don’t think I would be.
A few reasons to back this up, firstly Epic have no hardware background and so I have nothing to have previous excitement over. Compared to Valve, where I have used the Index and I own the old steam controller and a Deck. Epic launching a controller just isn’t exciting to me.
Secondly, there are a load of controllers out there, and a lot of good controllers. If I was only able to use the controller within the Epic launcher, I would just get something else.
Thirdly, this would be an epic exclusive, I am not sure I would have actually head about it. They are impressively good at being a marketing black hole.
I would normally be pissed about it, and do tend to get annoyed at every other controller manufacturer who make it necessary to use proprietary apps to make full use of their controllers.
But in the case of Steam, I’m already using their input software with every other controller I use for the simple fact that it is that useful. Also, it’s probably only a matter of time before there are upstream kernel drivers.
Valves contributions to Proton and Wine already leave Linux in a great place for gaming, with or without Steam. Post-Gabe Steam is simply a matter of going back to the high seas. 🏴☠️
Difference is that those who extensively use Steam Input like me have already been adding games to Steam to utilize Steam Input in non Steam games to set up things like gyro aim, radial menus, modeshifts, action sets, etc.
Steam Input is a powerful remapper and free. Paid options like ReWASD ended up getting people banned, since mouse and keyboard users started using it to cheat by having their mouse emulate a joystick and the company refusing to remove support to bind controller inputs to mouse/keyboard.
It’d come down to how good Epic’s controller remapping software is in supporting advanced configs, and customization for inputs like gyro and touchpads and third party controllers.
It’s still a negative because what if you decide you move away from Steam. Are you just going to throw the controller in the bin because you can’t use it elsewhere? Are you going to keep the entire Steam client on your machine just because you want to use the controller? And that’s assuming it’s easy to use the controller with non-Steam games. For example from the review they struggled to get the controller to work with KCD2 because they booted it through Epic launcher and they couldn’t set up the launcher through Steam so they had to take a completely different approach to set up the controller just for KCD.
My entire library isn’t on Steam and that includes games I play with a controller. If setting up non-steam games is a pain in the ass for this controller I’m just going to stick to my Xbox controller because that’s pick up and play.
You’d need to use Steam Input anyways to set up unique inputs like touchpads, capacitive sticks, and grip sensors other controllers don’t have.
Those features are kind of the point of the new Steam Controller and requires user set up on a per game basis, since they aren’t natively supported in games.
So it is pointless to spend more on the Steam Controller if you are just wanting a Xbox controller experience. It’s an enthusiast controller where the extra price is for the inputs other controllers don’t have to set up to be used in ways devs didn’t anticipate.
That said this controller for the price should have had a way to save profiles so they could be used without needing Steam running.
But configuring the controller to work with a game is not the same as configuring the game to make the controller usable. There are a lot of input devices with custom layouts that have its own software for configuring the device and make it usable with all sorts of games without requiring a configuration of the game to identify the controller. And Valve should do the same with the Steam controller, create a software solution that lets you use and configure the Steam controller without needing the entire Steam client and some workaround for games outside the Steam ecosystem. It’s pretty much standard practice for interface devices and I don’t think we should be letting Valve off the hook because Steam is the biggest storefront on the PC market.
I’m thinking about the people like me who have a Steam account, want this controller, but would also love to use it at our friends’ places where there’s just a Switch 2 or a PS5.
For compatibility, I’m better off using 3rd party controllers.
Yeah, but buy a Switch 2 Pro Controller and try to use it on the PS5.
Vendor lock in is bad, don’t get me wrong but, without Steam, PS controllers have always been a pain to get going on PC. I would prefer they push native level OS controllers, even if it’s just a ‘lizard mode’ but I’m sure the track pads make it more complicated.
I hope that Steam will enable cross platform compatibility for their controller.
I don’t need the trackpads to work on my friend’s switch. Just a 1 to 1 mapping of the buttons from a switch pro controller is good enough.
It’s probably true by definition since I imagine the first batch will only be sold through the steam store 😅. I have the original steam controller and as I’ve been moving towards GOG and Itch my steam client and steam account remains vestigially just as a bloated steam controller driver. Honestly I would also accept it if they let us use the client completely offline without an account as well.
They did, a couple of weeks after launch. It wasn’t hard, it was just a USB device with lots of inputs so the software made a fake controller and allowed you to map inputs, it’s very likely the exact same software would work for the new controller for the inputs that both had. This thread is filled with fearmongering by people who have never held the OG steam controller in their hands and don’t understand this device.
For that matter, the original controller without Steam running had a default mapping that had it output as a mouse and keyboard with sensible bindings. It was called ‘lizard mode’.
Yes, except it only sells on steam so you need an account to buy one. Also I’m fairly confident that it will just work outside of steam, just not full functionality as that depends on SteamInput for remapping and gestures. Most games don’t handle gyro, trackpads or back buttons on controllers so if you use this outside of Steam you won’t take advantage of those features. But I would bet that it will work as a regular controller even without steam.
Can you even buy this without a Steam account though? It’s the Steam Controller, sold through Steam, designed to work on Steam. A third party driver to convert it to Xinput will probably drop within a week of its ship date (just like it did for the first Steam Controller), but if you’re against having a Steam account I’d wonder why you want a Steam Controller in the first place. There’s plenty of non-Steam controllers after all.
so they would have to write and support a completely new userfacing application that would have to run on 3 different OSes and inject into games upon launch. a bit too much effort considering 99% of the audience will use it with Steam.
It’s called driver config and it’s not a tremendously complicated bit of software. Most of its functionality doesn’t need to “inject into games” - it just needs to remap the inputs so the driver can present them in whatever way works for the game. If the game doesn’t support anything sensible, then maybe fancy stuff is warranted, and you might well miss out on that from a driver config utility. But that’s OK.
I was not arguing against it functioning as a barebones xbox-like gamepad - that should’ve been done IMO. I was arguing against “splitting up SteamInput from Steam” - that would mean extracting all the fancy stuff too, and that’s the difficult part.
I call bullshit on that. The OG controller also “doesn’t work outside of steam” and “requires steam for full functionality”, but two weeks after lunch we already had open source projects that handled it, the same thing will happen here.
Requiring people to reverse engineer their own driver to avoid vendor lock-in is an objectively shitty move from Valve.
And the last time I tried them these 3rd party drivers didn’t work all that well, just because it technically works it’s a little useless if it’s not exposing all the functions to customize the controller.
Ok, so you need to understand how devices interact with your system, in short they send sequential messages via the USB, your OS interprets those messages depending on what type of device it is. The piece of software that tells your system how to interpret the messages is what we call a driver. The original steam controller sent messages as if it was a mouse and keyboard, so you could plug it on anything that didn’t even had Steam installed and it would work, but not as you would expect it to. The “driver” was nothing more than a thin layer that just did a remapping of “button 1 means controller A, button 2 means controller B, etc” which is the exact same thing SteamInput does.
And the new controller is the same, I can now say this for sure because Gamer Nexus mentioned in their video that the controller works as a mouse on a PC without Steam. So yeah, bullshit, the controller works as expected eleven without steam, you should be able to go into your game and change the mapping and press buttons, it will be weird as the game will show you keyboard icons instead of controller, but the steam controller is not a normal controller so it can’t send the same inputs as other controllers which is somewhat limited.
In short the steam controller works even without steam, but without SteamInput to map what each button/gesture means it’s picked as a generic keyboard/mouse which is a deliverate decision to allow it to be used to control windows machines and reopen steam even if it closes. If it was mapped as a controller it wouldn’t be able to move the mouse natively because Windows doesn’t move the mouse with a controller by default.
It would still be better if the controller did not require Steam in order to function.
Even cheap Chinesium USB controllers work out of the box with default drivers pre-installed with Windows and Android (don’t know about other platforms).
I just plugged in the old Steam Controller on my PC and it works for navigating around KDE just fine. No Steam Client running. Right pad is mouse, right trigger is click, joystick or left pad to scroll up/down.
Weirdly it stops working when I fire up Heroic Launcher so I’ll have to look into that. Works again if I also open the Steam client in the background.
I think that has to do with the old steam controller getting recognized as multiple HIDs, which means Heroic Launcher with activated Gamepad support might not actually work. Try deactivating gamepad support in Heroic (as counter intuitive that might be).
(Can’t try it myself because my ex got my 2 steam controllers for her PC to use as mediacenter from the couch + backup - we used it that way for a good decade and i have no issue learning something else, while she had to learn controllers from scratch when we met and it took a while, and i am not a sadist lol)
Edited to Add: You are using the so called “Snail Mode”, which in addition to being as slow as it gets regarding input sensitivity on the track pad, it also is a fixed configuration which cannot be changed. The right trackpad is a mouse (and identified by the system as such), while most of the buttons and the d-pad map to keyboard commands. Heroic sees a gamepad, but there’s actually no real gamepad input incoming, so it’s not XInput-compatible.
I imagine it’ll be a controller of major interest to get an open source driver mainlined in Linux. Less likely to end up plug and play on windows and mac but I can see something happening on those fronts too
Yeah, I reckon it’ll be supported in short order by mainline hid-steam, seeing as the deck controller isn’t much different.
I’ll probably get one for that reason, but I’m not pleased at the lack of dual stage triggers. I also prefer the pads for everything, so my OG will remain primary until it breaks. I’ll probably wait for a sale on this one or snatch additional OGs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
According to GN’s video, from my understanding it’ll function as a trackpad+keyboard when not running Steam. Hopefully it’ll get an update or 3rd party solution to fix that at some point, but until then, I’ll probably hold off on looking for a way to buy it myself.
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 :)
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.
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
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.
I’ll watch this when I get a chance, but I’m wondering if the puck actually polls at 1000 Hz but splits it up to 250 Hz per controller. That would be one way to design it for 4 controllers with common industry parts.
EDIT: Watched. GN didn’t check this or even speculate, but the measured latency was excellent with the wireless puck.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 recommend the GameSir Super Nova. Probably the best controller I’ve ever used. Not really expensive; costs a little less than standard Xbox/PS controllers in my country. Works on all platforms and comes with a very nice charging dock.
A note for any Windows users. The controller works flawlessly out of the box on Linux, but I’ve been running into issues when trying it on my Windows work machine. For some reason it doesn’t work with the wireless receiver plugged into the charging dock, only with the receiver directly in the PC. Their Windows app doesn’t seem to fix the issue, but offers quite a few customization options.
Depends on what you want from the controller. Very few have the track pads for example. But there are a lot of good controllers out there these days. I stuck with the Flydigi Vader 4. Gyro that can be mapped to right stick for motion controls in any game. 2 extra buttons, 4 extra back paddles (only 2 are particularly usable on the back). Great polling rate. Xbox ergonomics. Clicky mechanical face buttons. Analog triggers. Hall effect sticks. Customizable RGB but not too much of it. Has 2.4GHz dongle, works with xinput, dinput, and works on Switch.
I think Vader 5 is out now. I think it has TMR sticks but I’m not sure what else is different.
Gamesir Nova Lite 2 is a good budget controller with a lot of the same features for less than an official Xbox controller.
Gamesir G7 Pro is a good alternative to the Vader but I haven’t used it.
8BitDo makes some fun and unique controllers but their latency is not always great, and the ergonomics for the Ultimate feels off to me. I get a lot of use out of their Pro 2 controllers which are really nice for 2D games. They’re basically a Dual shock 4 + SNES controller. Also has gyro, paddles, xinput, dinput, and Switch modes. The Pro 3 is out now with a few more improvements but I’m good for now.
I’m quite happy with my 8BitDo 2 Ultimate, which has many features of the Steam Controller like TMR sticks, 4 extra rear buttons and gyro and has a better polling rate at 1000 Hz and is cheaper (~$56). It does however lack the track pads and advanced haptic feedback of the Steam Controller.
Get the wireless version. Not the bluetooth version. Reason is because the 8bitdo ultimate 2 wireless got a firmware update so it supports dinput mode when you power it on while holding down the B button. That provides full Steam Input support to rebind the extra 2 bumpers and paddles to any input you want. Wireless version does have bluetooth support, but difference is just that the one with the bluetooth name is one that connects to the Switch console over bluetooth and the wireless one made more with PC support in mind. Which is the reason it got dinput update while the bluetooth version didn’t.
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.
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 don’t think all membranes are equal. Reviews so far are saying the face buttons here are rather quiet but also not as snappy as others (presumably comparing to Deck).
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.
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.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
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.
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.
Yeah, thinking about how SteamOS works, I think we might actually be in the clear.
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.
Good to hear, good to hear.
fuck emThat’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.
Are they? I bought a xbox pro controller for well over 100 dollars and i have to use it wired on my pc because i don’t have a xbox dongle that they don’t sell anymore
I guarantee you that there’ll be a no-steam driver for this in a matter of months.
Someone will make it work within a few weeks.
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
This is funny, because amer*can currency is nowhere near strong enough to be comparable to EUR now
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
Yeah, but because the price in the US is pre-tax the real price is around $108 which is still less than €99 but not by that much. Also, yeah USD is weakened but that also means people there are making less money so they have less purchasing power, it’s common for companies to price the same thing lower on low-income countries and higher on high-income ones to compensate.
it doesn’t make sense to put only one price without tax
americans have less purchasing power than before not than europeans
That’s done because that’s the norm in the USA, if you advertise a price without tax on Europe you will be legally bound to sell at that price.
I didn’t meant to imply that Americans have less purchasing power than Europeans (although they might, I don’t know) but rather than it’s common for companies to price things differently according to purchasing power and while the dollar did lose power that also means it’s people lost purchasing power so it makes sense to keep it the same price instead of increasing it to compensate as otherwise they might loose sales.
Also something that might not occur to Europeans (and didn’t to me when I first visited the US) is that different states each have their own tax laws and can set the tax rate independently.
Which contributes to why it’s usual to show price before tax.
I hate it personally, but that’s how it is.
That’s a stupid argument, and it’s more of a thing Americans say to try to convince themselves that their system makes sense. Taxes are also different in different EU countries, some companies have different prices on different countries because of it, while others prefer to advertise to the whole community as a single market. Regardless, the price they advertise is the price you pay, otherwise it’s called false advertising.
99€ is with tax and 99$ 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!”
This is the answer.
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.
Scoring only 3.5 for software is pretty ridiculous, since Steam runs in every major desktop OS and SteamInput is crazy customizable. Most dedicated software for devices is either Windows-only or hot garbage (or both).
“I don’t want a steam account” should be perfectly justifiable reason in itself. There is no technical reason why they can’t split up steam input from the steam client for base functionality.
Exactly. If Epic released a $99 controller that required EGS running to work people would be up in arms.
Yeah, if Sony sold you a controller that requires playstation everyone would be up in arms… Ah, no, bad example, their controllers do require playstation and it is an open source driver that makes them work… I know! If Microsoft sold you a controller that requires Windows everyone would be up in arms… Ah, no, bad example, they already do and it’s an open source driver that allows it to work outside of it… I guess this is just more of the same? Except (I still don’t have mine so can’t fully confirm but would be surprised if it didn’t) the steam controller probably works just like a regular controller outside of Steam, you just lose SteamInput which is very important for this controller.
Supposedly the new Steam Controller will work similar to the Steam Deck. By default it acts as mouse + keyboard. On Linux the Steam Deck Controller can act as a gamepad when holding down the start button. Hopefully the new Controller uses the same driver.
But so far there is no Windows driver so they are stuck in keyboard+mouse mode.
I have been thinking about this for a while, and I don’t think I would be.
A few reasons to back this up, firstly Epic have no hardware background and so I have nothing to have previous excitement over. Compared to Valve, where I have used the Index and I own the old steam controller and a Deck. Epic launching a controller just isn’t exciting to me.
Secondly, there are a load of controllers out there, and a lot of good controllers. If I was only able to use the controller within the Epic launcher, I would just get something else.
Thirdly, this would be an epic exclusive, I am not sure I would have actually head about it. They are impressively good at being a marketing black hole.
I would normally be pissed about it, and do tend to get annoyed at every other controller manufacturer who make it necessary to use proprietary apps to make full use of their controllers.
But in the case of Steam, I’m already using their input software with every other controller I use for the simple fact that it is that useful. Also, it’s probably only a matter of time before there are upstream kernel drivers.
The day GabeN dies I will fear for my game library and all the Steam hardware I’ve bought.
If he’s worth his salt, there will be a decent replacement.
Valves contributions to Proton and Wine already leave Linux in a great place for gaming, with or without Steam. Post-Gabe Steam is simply a matter of going back to the high seas. 🏴☠️
Bazzite-deck 44 will include open gamepad UI, you get an open source “Steam BPM -like” UI but for any game source.
Difference is that those who extensively use Steam Input like me have already been adding games to Steam to utilize Steam Input in non Steam games to set up things like gyro aim, radial menus, modeshifts, action sets, etc.
Steam Input is a powerful remapper and free. Paid options like ReWASD ended up getting people banned, since mouse and keyboard users started using it to cheat by having their mouse emulate a joystick and the company refusing to remove support to bind controller inputs to mouse/keyboard.
It’d come down to how good Epic’s controller remapping software is in supporting advanced configs, and customization for inputs like gyro and touchpads and third party controllers.
Steam’s street cred in danger here. They are going to join them not beat them.
I want to meet the person who would consider buying this but doesn’t have a Steam account.
(I do not think this hypothetical person exists.)
It’s still a negative because what if you decide you move away from Steam. Are you just going to throw the controller in the bin because you can’t use it elsewhere? Are you going to keep the entire Steam client on your machine just because you want to use the controller? And that’s assuming it’s easy to use the controller with non-Steam games. For example from the review they struggled to get the controller to work with KCD2 because they booted it through Epic launcher and they couldn’t set up the launcher through Steam so they had to take a completely different approach to set up the controller just for KCD.
My entire library isn’t on Steam and that includes games I play with a controller. If setting up non-steam games is a pain in the ass for this controller I’m just going to stick to my Xbox controller because that’s pick up and play.
You’d need to use Steam Input anyways to set up unique inputs like touchpads, capacitive sticks, and grip sensors other controllers don’t have.
Those features are kind of the point of the new Steam Controller and requires user set up on a per game basis, since they aren’t natively supported in games.
So it is pointless to spend more on the Steam Controller if you are just wanting a Xbox controller experience. It’s an enthusiast controller where the extra price is for the inputs other controllers don’t have to set up to be used in ways devs didn’t anticipate.
That said this controller for the price should have had a way to save profiles so they could be used without needing Steam running.
But configuring the controller to work with a game is not the same as configuring the game to make the controller usable. There are a lot of input devices with custom layouts that have its own software for configuring the device and make it usable with all sorts of games without requiring a configuration of the game to identify the controller. And Valve should do the same with the Steam controller, create a software solution that lets you use and configure the Steam controller without needing the entire Steam client and some workaround for games outside the Steam ecosystem. It’s pretty much standard practice for interface devices and I don’t think we should be letting Valve off the hook because Steam is the biggest storefront on the PC market.
Like I said.
I read that and found it weird that you’d argue against my point only to turn around and agree with me in the end.
I’m thinking about the people like me who have a Steam account, want this controller, but would also love to use it at our friends’ places where there’s just a Switch 2 or a PS5.
For compatibility, I’m better off using 3rd party controllers.
Yeah, but buy a Switch 2 Pro Controller and try to use it on the PS5.
Vendor lock in is bad, don’t get me wrong but, without Steam, PS controllers have always been a pain to get going on PC. I would prefer they push native level OS controllers, even if it’s just a ‘lizard mode’ but I’m sure the track pads make it more complicated.
I hope that Steam will enable cross platform compatibility for their controller. I don’t need the trackpads to work on my friend’s switch. Just a 1 to 1 mapping of the buttons from a switch pro controller is good enough.
Valve makes PC hardware. Consoles are walled gardens. You want to use any controller? Stay on PC or buy a Magic Flash or Brooks.
My Thrustmaster Flight Stick doesn’t work with my Wii U, how dare Thrustmaster not support my choices.
You recognize vendor lock is bad, and that’s why they’re complaining, you guys are arguing about nothing
It’s probably true by definition since I imagine the first batch will only be sold through the steam store 😅. I have the original steam controller and as I’ve been moving towards GOG and Itch my steam client and steam account remains vestigially just as a bloated steam controller driver. Honestly I would also accept it if they let us use the client completely offline without an account as well.
Hasn’t someone written a wrapper to use the original Steam Controller without the Steam client software? I thought that was a thing years ago.
They did, a couple of weeks after launch. It wasn’t hard, it was just a USB device with lots of inputs so the software made a fake controller and allowed you to map inputs, it’s very likely the exact same software would work for the new controller for the inputs that both had. This thread is filled with fearmongering by people who have never held the OG steam controller in their hands and don’t understand this device.
For that matter, the original controller without Steam running had a default mapping that had it output as a mouse and keyboard with sensible bindings. It was called ‘lizard mode’.
deleted by creator
Yes, except it only sells on steam so you need an account to buy one. Also I’m fairly confident that it will just work outside of steam, just not full functionality as that depends on SteamInput for remapping and gestures. Most games don’t handle gyro, trackpads or back buttons on controllers so if you use this outside of Steam you won’t take advantage of those features. But I would bet that it will work as a regular controller even without steam.
Can you even buy this without a Steam account though? It’s the Steam Controller, sold through Steam, designed to work on Steam. A third party driver to convert it to Xinput will probably drop within a week of its ship date (just like it did for the first Steam Controller), but if you’re against having a Steam account I’d wonder why you want a Steam Controller in the first place. There’s plenty of non-Steam controllers after all.
so they would have to write and support a completely new userfacing application that would have to run on 3 different OSes and inject into games upon launch. a bit too much effort considering 99% of the audience will use it with Steam.
It’s called driver config and it’s not a tremendously complicated bit of software. Most of its functionality doesn’t need to “inject into games” - it just needs to remap the inputs so the driver can present them in whatever way works for the game. If the game doesn’t support anything sensible, then maybe fancy stuff is warranted, and you might well miss out on that from a driver config utility. But that’s OK.
I was not arguing against it functioning as a barebones xbox-like gamepad - that should’ve been done IMO. I was arguing against “splitting up SteamInput from Steam” - that would mean extracting all the fancy stuff too, and that’s the difficult part.
I see
Then don’t buy the Steam controller. I would assume 99.9% of those interested in the “Steam” Controller will have a Steam account
Imagine if Xbox controllers only worked for Game Pass.
Since when have Xbox controllers worked for PlayStation? Plus Steam is free and Game Pass isn’t, so a false equivalency
I feel like people, even here in this thread, have no idea what SteamInput is.
I dunno if maybe the original Steam controller had compatibility issues or what, but SteamInput has likely done away with all of that.
If anything, more reviews should lower the score for shitty software.
I love the OG Steam Controller, and I’m getting the new one for sure, but requirement to use Steam for full functionality is a massive downside.
I call bullshit on that. The OG controller also “doesn’t work outside of steam” and “requires steam for full functionality”, but two weeks after lunch we already had open source projects that handled it, the same thing will happen here.
Bullshit on what?
Requiring people to reverse engineer their own driver to avoid vendor lock-in is an objectively shitty move from Valve.
And the last time I tried them these 3rd party drivers didn’t work all that well, just because it technically works it’s a little useless if it’s not exposing all the functions to customize the controller.
Ok, so you need to understand how devices interact with your system, in short they send sequential messages via the USB, your OS interprets those messages depending on what type of device it is. The piece of software that tells your system how to interpret the messages is what we call a driver. The original steam controller sent messages as if it was a mouse and keyboard, so you could plug it on anything that didn’t even had Steam installed and it would work, but not as you would expect it to. The “driver” was nothing more than a thin layer that just did a remapping of “button 1 means controller A, button 2 means controller B, etc” which is the exact same thing SteamInput does.
And the new controller is the same, I can now say this for sure because Gamer Nexus mentioned in their video that the controller works as a mouse on a PC without Steam. So yeah, bullshit, the controller works as expected eleven without steam, you should be able to go into your game and change the mapping and press buttons, it will be weird as the game will show you keyboard icons instead of controller, but the steam controller is not a normal controller so it can’t send the same inputs as other controllers which is somewhat limited.
In short the steam controller works even without steam, but without SteamInput to map what each button/gesture means it’s picked as a generic keyboard/mouse which is a deliverate decision to allow it to be used to control windows machines and reopen steam even if it closes. If it was mapped as a controller it wouldn’t be able to move the mouse natively because Windows doesn’t move the mouse with a controller by default.
It would still be better if the controller did not require Steam in order to function.
Even cheap Chinesium USB controllers work out of the box with default drivers pre-installed with Windows and Android (don’t know about other platforms).
I just plugged in the old Steam Controller on my PC and it works for navigating around KDE just fine. No Steam Client running. Right pad is mouse, right trigger is click, joystick or left pad to scroll up/down.
Weirdly it stops working when I fire up Heroic Launcher so I’ll have to look into that. Works again if I also open the Steam client in the background.
I think that has to do with the old steam controller getting recognized as multiple HIDs, which means Heroic Launcher with activated Gamepad support might not actually work. Try deactivating gamepad support in Heroic (as counter intuitive that might be).
(Can’t try it myself because my ex got my 2 steam controllers for her PC to use as mediacenter from the couch + backup - we used it that way for a good decade and i have no issue learning something else, while she had to learn controllers from scratch when we met and it took a while, and i am not a sadist lol)
Edited to Add: You are using the so called “Snail Mode”, which in addition to being as slow as it gets regarding input sensitivity on the track pad, it also is a fixed configuration which cannot be changed. The right trackpad is a mouse (and identified by the system as such), while most of the buttons and the d-pad map to keyboard commands. Heroic sees a gamepad, but there’s actually no real gamepad input incoming, so it’s not XInput-compatible.
Thanks for all that!
I imagine it’ll be a controller of major interest to get an open source driver mainlined in Linux. Less likely to end up plug and play on windows and mac but I can see something happening on those fronts too
Yeah, I reckon it’ll be supported in short order by mainline hid-steam, seeing as the deck controller isn’t much different.
I’ll probably get one for that reason, but I’m not pleased at the lack of dual stage triggers. I also prefer the pads for everything, so my OG will remain primary until it breaks. I’ll probably wait for a sale on this one or snatch additional OGs.
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.
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.
Probably could’ve saved the consumer $15-20 if they just used a typical type C charging port and not a proprietary connection.
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.
More, because plus tax!
Maybe they’re an octopus.
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.
Does anyone know if it functions as a normal xinput controller on windows without using steam?
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.
According to GN’s video, from my understanding it’ll function as a trackpad+keyboard when not running Steam. Hopefully it’ll get an update or 3rd party solution to fix that at some point, but until then, I’ll probably hold off on looking for a way to buy it myself.
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 :)
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
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.
https://youtu.be/wfr4QN1Hvhs?t=494
I’ll watch this when I get a chance, but I’m wondering if the puck actually polls at 1000 Hz but splits it up to 250 Hz per controller. That would be one way to design it for 4 controllers with common industry parts.
EDIT: Watched. GN didn’t check this or even speculate, but the measured latency was excellent with the wireless puck.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Opus Magnum, Dwarf Fortress, Noita, Rim World… so many games would be unplayable on Steam Deck without the track pads.
Could not disagree more. Literally any game with mouse input is 1000x more playable
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.
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
I wouldn’t be able to play factorio without them. I also like to make touch menus for things
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.
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.
While we’re on the subject. Who can recommend me and better cheaper alternative?
Happy with 8bitdo. Haptics are great.
I recommend the GameSir Super Nova. Probably the best controller I’ve ever used. Not really expensive; costs a little less than standard Xbox/PS controllers in my country. Works on all platforms and comes with a very nice charging dock.
A note for any Windows users. The controller works flawlessly out of the box on Linux, but I’ve been running into issues when trying it on my Windows work machine. For some reason it doesn’t work with the wireless receiver plugged into the charging dock, only with the receiver directly in the PC. Their Windows app doesn’t seem to fix the issue, but offers quite a few customization options.
Depends on what you want from the controller. Very few have the track pads for example. But there are a lot of good controllers out there these days. I stuck with the Flydigi Vader 4. Gyro that can be mapped to right stick for motion controls in any game. 2 extra buttons, 4 extra back paddles (only 2 are particularly usable on the back). Great polling rate. Xbox ergonomics. Clicky mechanical face buttons. Analog triggers. Hall effect sticks. Customizable RGB but not too much of it. Has 2.4GHz dongle, works with xinput, dinput, and works on Switch.
I think Vader 5 is out now. I think it has TMR sticks but I’m not sure what else is different.
Gamesir Nova Lite 2 is a good budget controller with a lot of the same features for less than an official Xbox controller.
Gamesir G7 Pro is a good alternative to the Vader but I haven’t used it.
8BitDo makes some fun and unique controllers but their latency is not always great, and the ergonomics for the Ultimate feels off to me. I get a lot of use out of their Pro 2 controllers which are really nice for 2D games. They’re basically a Dual shock 4 + SNES controller. Also has gyro, paddles, xinput, dinput, and Switch modes. The Pro 3 is out now with a few more improvements but I’m good for now.
I’m quite happy with my 8BitDo 2 Ultimate, which has many features of the Steam Controller like TMR sticks, 4 extra rear buttons and gyro and has a better polling rate at 1000 Hz and is cheaper (~$56). It does however lack the track pads and advanced haptic feedback of the Steam Controller.
Thanks!
Get the wireless version. Not the bluetooth version. Reason is because the 8bitdo ultimate 2 wireless got a firmware update so it supports dinput mode when you power it on while holding down the B button. That provides full Steam Input support to rebind the extra 2 bumpers and paddles to any input you want. Wireless version does have bluetooth support, but difference is just that the one with the bluetooth name is one that connects to the Switch console over bluetooth and the wireless one made more with PC support in mind. Which is the reason it got dinput update while the bluetooth version didn’t.
No trackpads so not entirely better, but the Gulikit Es Pro are a lot cheaper.
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.
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 don’t think all membranes are equal. Reviews so far are saying the face buttons here are rather quiet but also not as snappy as others (presumably comparing to Deck).
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 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.
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