Okay, admit it everyone; you thought that Valve’s third announcement would be either about Half Life 3 or Left 4 Dead 3 (or another game). Go ahead, admit it, don’t lie to us. You really wished and hoped for something like that, right? Well, get ready to get disappointed as Valve’s third announcement is about the Steam Controller. Now the big news here is that the Steam Controller will be used with either Steam Machines or the PC. Oh, and if you are happy with the mouse+keyboard combo, you will be able to keep using it with Valve’s Steam services. Hooray (duh).
According to its description, the Steam Controller is designed to work with all the games on Steam: past, present, and future. Even the older titles in the catalog and the ones which were not built with controller support.
The Steam Controller aims to offer a new and vastly superior control scheme, all while enabling gamers to play from the comfort of their sofa (hear that Microsoft? Perhaps you should port Alan Wake to Steam Machines too). The controller is built with high-precision input technologies and is focused on low-latency performance… which obviously good news for those interested in it.
The Steam Controller will feature dual trackpads, haptics, a touch screen, buttons (duh) and shared configurations.
Moreover, the Steam Controller was designed from the ground up to be hackable. Valve plans to make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering.
You can read more about this controller at its official page, so make sure to visit it if you have any further questions about it (or if you want to participate in its beta phase).
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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