Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Machines-Frame-2026
Also listed here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware
Valve has already sent support for the new Steam Controller upstream: https://www.phoronix.com/news/New-Steam-Controller-SDL
Well thank God I don't give a shit how my controller looks as long as it is well designed.
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Actually, not sure how well it works. But it certainly looks very odd
I mean you will care if it doesn't fit well in your hand and is too bulky. I mean that was the issue with the Xbox controller and still is issue with the Xbox controller for anybody with smaller hands I know the Japanese market had quite a stir regarding that. And this thing looks like it's twice as thick as the Xbox controller. It reminds me of some of the old third party PC controllers that I used to have back in the 90s and early 2000s. In fact I had one that if you were to round off the top of this thing looked almost exactly like it.
As someone with hands on the larger side, small controllers suck for us too.
The point you should be focused on is having a diversity in controller options, not that any one controller is good/bad.
It is entirely subjective to say the controller is good. Your definition of good won't be my definition of good. Your taste and opinion is just as valid as mine, and I don't impose my preferences on you.
I don't know how big that controller is, since no banana was provided for scale. It could be huge and unwieldy, or it could be very tiny. One size never fits all.
At the end of the day, if you don't like it, don't buy it, and/or don't use it. This is +1 option in the controller space, and that kind of competition is good no matter what opinion you have.
As someone also with large hands, I still love well designed controllers that fit well for smaller hands - like the classic Dualshock 2 controller. I used one again pretty recently. Had to stop because the analogs were virtually useless, but the smallness of the controller stood out to me because after enough time playing a game I noticed I could more easily forget the controller itself and focus on the game (except those damn broken sticks).
When I went back to the DualSense, it felt clunky and unwieldy by comparison. I feel bad for gamers with small hands, because all the standard controllers must be monstrous for a lot of people. No wonder mobile gaming gained so much traction - game companies forgot that kids play games too.
Exactly right. And this is driving my point. There are options. If you don't like one option, try something else.
Pretty much every controller design has positives and negatives that change depending on who is using the controller. I enjoy the xbox one/series controllers for the most part, and they're fairly reliable and my usual go to. I also have a dual shock somewhere that I don't really use, and a stadia controller that was patched to work with anything, which gets more action than the dual shock, but not nearly as much as the Xbox controllers.
I usually play with kb/mouse, so controllers are already pretty rare in my gaming experience, but they make an appearance from time to time.
With these new steam controllers, I might see a good reason to use a controller more frequently.... Especially if I can afford the $900+ that the steam machine will probably cost.... They said it would be "competitively" priced in relation to PCs, not consoles. So I'm expecting $900+ right now. Time to start saving.
I'm not sure what the standard for large vs small hands is, but I haven't had issues with pretty much any controller except the OG Xbox controller:
My kids have no issues with either the Xbox 360 controller or DS4 controller that I have.
I would call it less of an issue (at least in my case), and more of something that became apparent only after going back and experiencing the smaller controller to compare others to.
I really wish there were a modernized controller in the exact form factor of the classic ds2. Like if it had tmr sticks and a better dpad, but was still a wired controller and had 4 shoulder buttons instead of two triggers. Don't get me wrong, triggers have their place, but there are some games that work better with all buttons, which probably partly explains the popularity of hair trigger mods.
DS4 is pretty close.
I like the ds4 - so much so that I want to get a new one and mod it for more modern features. But it's still distinctly larger. It can be kind of surprizing to re-experience just how small and light the ds2 is compared to newer controllers.
I mean honestly the real thing to worry about here is how long is valve going to actually support this and support their hardware. They're notorious for releasing things and then forgetting about it within a year or two. I mean they announce the steam 2 controller years and years ago and then decided one day no we're not going to make it. That disappointed so many people and people still are trying to get to their hands on the first steam controller that is what like 15 years old or something like that at this point.
They still support the original steam controller and the steam link though.
I would argue that, as long as valve gets it out the door, they support it. Index owners are still supported and that's from a headset released in 2019. The oculus rift CV1 released in 2016 and it was killed around 2020 when oculus was purchased by Meta. Four years, and the headset is basically a paperweight for anyone who still owns one. A $600 USD paperweight.
Considering that the connection cable was the first thing to die and in 2020 meta stopped selling those cables, anyone I know who had one, including myself, either stopped using it, or was forced to stop when their cable inevitably broke.
There's a dozen examples. The og steam controller, the steam link, and more recently the steam deck, which is still going strong.
Yes, they have issues getting ideas out the door, but when they get out the door, they're supported for a good long while.
These don't look like "we have an idea to build a thing" that will never make it to market... This looks like "we finally got a delivery date for these finished units and we're excited about it"
I'm looking forward to it, no matter what. Valve has time and time again proven itself to be more consumer focused than other tech companies. More from them is good IMO.
That is the complete opposite of what they are. They are notorious for supporting all the hardware they have released indefinitely. They still keep releasing updates for the steam link and steam controller to this day and both of those have long been out of sale.
I mean officially the steam controller updates were discontinued in 2023 for the internal configurator and everything like that any current updates or anything like that is either the third party or being hacked together by people using it.
You mean the one that was released in 2015, and they stopped selling in 2019, then continued to support for at least four more years?
That's the one?
And we compare that to what? Can I get support on my Xbox 360 wireless controllers still? How about my dual shock controller for a PS3? Google surely still updates the stadia controller, right? They didn't give up on it less than a year after the stadia service was taken down... Right?
With the exception of maybe 8bitdo or something, their support for that controller was extremely good, and the fact that they made it 10 years ago, and stopped selling it 6 years ago, but only stopped supporting it 2 years ago, that's pretty good, IMO.
I mean those are idiotic comparisons. I can purchase a gaming system from the '70s and still play it without having to update a controller or do anything like that. I can pull out my PS1 PS2 or PS3 and have them work 100% fine with no issues. I can pull out my original Xbox with no problems. Because they don't require constant updating configuring or fiddling with because they just work. And talking about Google anything being supported is just dumb. Hell they don't even support their own products beyond a couple years regardless of anything. I don't know why you're so upset about these facts but facts are what they are. Hell they've been promising a steam 2 controller since I think 2017 or something like that just like Half-Life 3.