“If at first you don’t succeed, dust your gamepad off and try again,” said Valve before unveiling their latest iteration of the Steam Controller at GDC. Many felt like the previous build of the gamepad could have been far more intuitive, so Valve went back to the drawing board to make something that felt a little more familiar in the hands of gamers. The end result:
As speculated back in mid-January, the touch screens on the Steam controller have been replaced with face buttons. After 15 minutes of hands-on time with it, I can certainly confirm that the face buttons are an improvement, though getting use to the touch pads may still take a little longer than desired if you’re used to the analog stick layout of today’s consoles.
The new version of the Steam Controller also comes with a couple of new features, like the addition of 2.4Ghz wireless capability and improved sensitivity on the touch pads. Clearly, Valve is getting closer to something worthwhile, and as long as they continue to listen to fan feedback, I’m pretty sure this thing will turn out to be rather excellent. But in the meantime, let’s take a second to ogle Valve’s official Steam Machine prototypes, also being showcased on the GDC floor:
Isn’t she beautiful?
Any footage of it in use? Would love to see a review of the entire steam box itself.
Never actually seen this controller before or even heard about it. Should be interesting? Is Steam moving from digital to actually creating a console or will this be cross applicable with other platforms. Time will tell.