Last week, I wrote about the top 5 worst controllers throughout the evolution of gaming. People often forget about the humble controller and its importance in our daily gaming. We have seen the move from joysticks, to d-pads and eventually analogue sticks incorporated into ergonomic controller designs. In the current generation of consoles we see much more comfortable designs, a stronger sense of ergonomics, hand placement and the effects that a controller’s design can have on hand fatigue.
Within this evolution, Valve has decided to throw their hat into the controller arena with the now finalised version of the Steam Controller. Valve promises with the Steam Controller “a new level of precise control for your favorite games”and the ability to play all your favourite Steam games even those designed without innate controller support. The Steam Controller itself features dual trackpads, HD haptic feedback, dual-stage triggers, back grip buttons, and promises fully customisable control schemes.
Valve’s new controller purports to have improved resolution and fidelity of input over traditional gamepads and controllers. Further saying that the Steam Controller incredible low-latency wireless performance. Valve argue that the dual trackpads offer high precision input with 1:1 absolute position input similar to a trackball, steering wheel or adaptive centering joystick. The trackpads can be customised to whatever the user’s needs are.
The Steam Controller will also offer HD haptic feedback with Haptic force actuators on both sides of Valve’s controller. You will be able to feel every vibration even the shot of a rifle in-game. This will help you as a gamer to get tactile feedback about all the elements you experience in-game, including speed, boundaries, thresholds, textures and actions whilst playing.
Valve have attempted to design an ergonomic controller with the Steam Controller with comfort in mind and the controller features dual-stage triggers which allow a digital click to be heard at the end of a trigger pull. This offers a greater degree of tactile feedback when combined with the HD Haptic force actuators on top of everything.
Impressions for the controller have been very mixed with many stating that the controller will in no way replace the traditional keyboard and mouse among hardcore PC gamers. Some see the Steam controller as providing a higher degree of precision and control, particularly in FPS games like the latest Unreal game, and trumping traditional analogue stick controllers which are highly reliant on auto-aim. Criticisms were leveled at the trackpads which many felt took a while to become accustomed to and were awkward in first uses of the controller. Others argued that the trackpads felt loose and lacked precision.
Personally, I feel that the Steam Controller may have a market among some PC gamers who wish to take their PC to the lounge. But I don’t think the Steam Controller will ever truly replace a mouse and keyboard, or even the traditional analogue stick controller as we know it. With the Steam Controller slated for release in November this year, we can see then how the market reacts to the new controller and whether Valve’s foray into the controller arena holds any true merit.
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