We set out with a singular goal: bring the Steam experience, in its entirety, into the living-room. We knew how to build the user interface, we knew how to build a machine, and even an operating system. But that still left input – our biggest missing link. We realized early on that our goals required a new kind of input technology – one that could bridge the gap from the desk to the living room without compromises. So we spent a year experimenting with new approaches to input and we now believe we’ve arrived at something worth sharing and testing with you.
Where Microsoft and Sony show zero innovation with the Xbox One and the PS4, Valve is the one pushing limits. Their controller is quite, quite unique, and has a whole different approach than what we’ve seen before – instead of two inaccurate joysticks, it has two super-precise touchpads with advanced haptic feedback and the ability for both absolute and relative positioning. Go read the description – a summary won’t do it justice. And, as always: hackable. Yes, even the controller is open and hackable. Wow.
They’re on the right track here. If I were Microsoft or Sony, I’d start getting worried.
Those things better have awesome build quality and work perfectly. Otherwise, they’ll just be junk like so many non-Apple trackpads on laptops have been…
Edited 2013-09-27 18:54 UTC
What amazes me is how badly Mr Holwerda has become a fanboy and nobody calls him on it. Sony and MSFT are bad, except when it comes to winPhone as he has one of those and thinks it wonderful so Apple and Google are bad in that case, and he is cheerleading so hard for valve with this he might as well break out the pom poms.
All they did was replace the sticks with trackpads…how many of you LOVE your laptop’s trackpad? How many of you think its a better UI than a mouse? With a trackpad it all comes down to how accurate and sensitive they make the pad which means it comes down to price. If Valve goes for the same build cost as an Xbone or PS4 controller? Its gonna suck because you have to trade off performance for low cost.
It is like putting a Razor Naga against the X360 controller and having a snipe off, no contest as they sacrificed response time and accuracy for a lower BOM. Will this work? Well until you can hold one in your hand and its been put through its paces by a site like Anandtech or tom’s Hardware I’ll avoid judgement one way or another.
But the fanboy flag waving and cheerleading really needs to quit, this is reading less and less like a tech news site and more and more like somebody’s blog. Its bad enough that /. turned into Reddit, lets not have OSnews turn into a fanboy blog, okay?
…wat
Too late bud, OS News already is a fan boy site. Put Linux on anything and instantly it’s accepted as being awesome and the end of Sony and Microsoft LOL
Getting MODed down proves my point.
No, it really doesn’t prove anything.
Of course you’re going to see a lot of news about linux on new devices. The reason is that not many other OS:es successfully branches out to new areas.
Generalizing…you are telling everyone that Linux is the only OS that tries anything new. That’s a laugh. Windows has been moving into embedded devices, tablets, phones and Xbox in the last few years. Mac OS has migrated to tablets, phones, servers also. So what is so different about a set top box that runs Linux…nothing. There have been many set top boxes and cable boxes that have run Linux. More fan-boy comments as usual.
You seriously think Valve is of the same caliber as Roku or Ouya? The reason for the excitement surrounding these announcements is due to Valve having a long-standing track record of innovation and influence in whatever area they involve themselves. This can only be a good thing for Linux in the long run.
Edited 2013-09-28 15:40 UTC
Note that key word in the phrase, “…successfully branches out into other areas.”
1.1) While Apple has had considerable success in the phone and tablet space, they are no longer market leaders.
1.2) Microsoft has seen its share of the phone market drop from a high of about 32% 10 years ago to about 3% last year. Meanwhile, its tablet offering has been met with a collective yawn in the marketplace.
1.3) Despite being a latecomer to this space, Linux based tablets and smartphones now dominate the global market.
2.1) OS/X is a high end, very solid desktop offering. It continues to enjoy a limited degree of success. Windows 8.x will probably create new opportunities for growth as people avoid its UI.
2.2) Microsoft, IMNSHO, made a huge strategic blunder when they attempted to force a touch screen interface onto a desktop UI. It was an incredibly bad marketing decision that they will eventually have to reverse. The longer it takes them to realize it, the more they will see their desktop market continue to erode.
2.3) Linux has never had a significant laptop or desktop share despite being originally designed for that space. Only diehards use it.
3.1) Apple has never had a significant server business despite nearly 20 years of product offerings. As far as this outsider can tell, they just don’t see it as a core strategy for them. They certainly don’t seem to invest much in this space, anyhow.
3.2) Microsoft has a good sized piece of the mid-range to small server business inside organization’s firewalls. However, they have had little success in the Internet facing space (outside of Azure, that is) and zero success cracking the mainframe and supercomputer markets.
3.3) Linux has largely replaced Unix in the small to midrange server market and continues to chip away at Microsoft’s share of this space. It has been the go-to OS of choice for Internet facing servers for several years. In the mainframe space, Linux enjoys a fair degree of success due to IBM’s more than a decade of support. In the supercomputer space, I will simply refer you to the Supercomputer Top 500 site:
http://top500.org/statistics/overtime/
Choose “Operating System Family.”
4.1) At the other end of the spectrum, Apple has no significant presence in the embedded device market.
4.2) About the only place that I’m aware of where Microsoft has had success in this space is with Ford for their in car entertainment system. Even there, though, I understand that the rest of Ford’s embedded CPUs are running Linux.
4.3) The embedded device market is pretty much a mix of Linux and proprietary, specialized OSes. However, most of the growth is going to Linux. Outside of true real-time applications, these days virtually everything you buy with some smarts in it uses Linux as the base OS.
In conclusion, Microsoft and Apple are essentially both niche players, really. (I’ll grant you, they’re awfully successful in their niches! 🙂 )
Microsoft owns the corporate desktop and part of the corporate server space. They will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Their hold on the consumer market is slipping as people move to tablets but they still have a very large presence there.
Apple has a great brand and will continue to be a major player at the high end, high profit margin consumer device space.
Everything else? A mix of lots of other players. Many if not most of them are using Linux as the base of their offerings.
The reason why is blindingly obvious when you stop and think about it. Why invest in developing your own base OS when you can leverage a collective work so easily? Save your development effort for where you can create product differentiation. That’s the secret to why Linux continues to see so much success over virtually the entire computing spectrum.
Edited 2013-09-30 14:14 UTC
What a load of shit. Thom seems to delight in having as many strong opinions as possible, but that’s really not the definition of a fan, let alone a ‘fanboy’, despite him being “called out on it” about six times a week. He bothers to post stories, without getting paid, & you get to moan about it.
According to your profile you’ve posted over six hundred comments without contributing one story to this volunteer run site. Get used to it, dig up a few articles, write a few articles, or bugger off.
Yes, I am drunk. London Pride is nice.
Because you really think he’s not getting paid?
Give Valve a break here. I sincerely doubt they would propose this design without having a genuinely good reason to think it would be a step-up. They’re not exactly a company to throw out gimmicks and try to be different just for the sake of being different.
I’ll reserve judgement on the controller until I’ve seen it in action, but I’m always interested in innovation in whatever form it takes.
It would seem developers are quite pleased with the Steam Controller, despite what our armchair experts here would claim to be impossible: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/28/steam-controller-dev-reactions/#… and http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/201195/Select_game_developers_us…
Edited 2013-09-28 16:56 UTC
Right on — here’s another detailed review, from a self-described controller snob: the developer of Super Meat Boy.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TommyRefenes/20130928/201219/My_time…
Just because he’s not a negative, old grouch doesn’t mean he’s a rabid fanboi.
Plus it was already done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play
(and without any enthusiastic uptake)
Given that he owns or has owned devices by all the above companies, it kinda rules out the whole fanboy thing from the start. Do you really know what you want to say there or are you just trolling? Just like he’s not blindly against MSFT, since he likes their phone OS.
The one on a Macbook is awesome, much prefer using that over a mouse to be honest. But I can’t say the same for the trackpad on any non-Apple device unfortunately, so I do take your point. It will be a wait-and-see for this. But you can’t write it off from the get-go either. It’s not particularly expensive technology, especially compared to the multiple moving parts involved in a joystick.
I think the point here is that they’re being innovative. At least there’s that. Look at the PlayStation controller. It hasn’t really changed since the Dual Shock Analogue came out for the PS1 – I found it horrible to use then and I find it horrible on the PS3 now. If it flops, I’m sure you can just plug in any old Logitech controller and use that instead.
Remember that Microsoft and Sony will sell their new consoles at a loss. Not as much as the PS3/XB360 era, but definitely will to a certain degree. They do this because hardware cost comes down over time, and because they get high margins on software sold.
Valve can brag all they want about getting into the living room, but they need to sell hardware at a price point comparable to the new offerings of Sony and Microsoft.
If third parties are developing such hardware, they will definitely need to make a profit for it, so it’s simply impossible for them to sell for less than the competition. Steam Machines will probably end up costing 500-800 usd.
Also, it’s not much of an advantage when only a small portion of the Steam catalog is available for Linux..
XBox One won’t be sold at a loss, according to a Microsoft exec (via Forbes: http://tinyurl.com/jwhtcrg )
I guess it kind of makes sense given it’s more expensive than PS4.
Yet that doesn’t invalidate my point, they still don’t need to make a profit out of it. Hardware partners for Steam Machines do.
This is all known tech, the losses at launch will be minimal, if not zero. 8 core AMD x86 cpus, 8G of ram, AMD GPUs. All close to off the shelf components.
But the smart thing is that Valve is spreading the risk. They don’t have to sink costs into the steamboxes as their hardware partners will take on that risk.
These look awesome. I had my doubts, but consider me very interested in Valve’s efforts.
By removing the sticks, they’ve decapitated the tactile feedback as to where your thumbs are. Pads also mean you get no response other than full impact when touching.
It’s the membrane keyboard of console controllers. I’ve already fought RSI, I’d never pick this up outside of a demo.
The buttons don’t look terribly responsive either, but those thumbpads mean RSI for many gamers out there.
Those circles are probably good enough.
Remember for a bit the kind of games played the most on PC. FPSs, strategy, etc.
It seems the control will likely double really well as a touchpad, and is more precise for FPS control than analog sticks.
The circles identify position, but require your thumbs to “seek” the neutral position rather than relax to restore to neutral.
Also, to use it as a button (I assume) you’ll have to lift the thumb, and bring it back down again, which will require you to seek the neutral position again.
This is not a small deal. The repeated motion and tension will absolutely damage tissue. I’ll stick to analog sticks or just keyboard and mouse.
Ars has more specifics about the haptic feedback techniques being built in to provide feedback for your thumbs.
Also, the clicking the trackpads might be mechanical in nature – Ars says each pad is also 8 buttons. If they weren’t mechanical, then there could be an arbitrary number of buttons if the developer so desired.
somehow it remindes me of the clickpads ti uses on their nspire calculators
they are utter garbage…
Haptic feedback isn’t tactile feedback. And really neither are what I’m aiming at. When your thumb pushes a thumbstick away from neutral, a spring is there to bring it back to center.
This design requires the thumb to seek the center using opposing muscle pairs, rather than simply relaxing. It’s absolutely textbook RSI.
Does no one remember membrane keyboards?
Well, the d-pads of old didn’t help return your thumbs to the center. Are people suffering from Super Mario-induced RSI?
Yes! Marathon sessions on NES and Super NES gaming gave me horrible strains and pains in my left thumb up into my wrist. And blisters on the tip/pad of my thumb.
Switching to a 3rd-party controller with software rubber on the buttons/d-pad, and the ability to screw in a little joystick to the d-pad, made gaming so much easier on my left hand.
It never did that to my still-developing hands, and doesn’t do that today, either.
I hated the screw-in thumbstick of the Zipper (http://tinyurl.com/qa4wksx), which that and the Turbo-buttons were the main selling point.
I also had an Advantage for the NES, and later the Super Advantage (http://tinyurl.com/q7w4tsq), but just the basic controller was always my favorite – The Super Advantage’s main purpose (At least for me) was to look awesome while whoopin’ ass at Street Fighter II.
I also hold the N64 controller in a weird way – I pinch the stick between my thumb and index, and use my middle finger for Z, which means I always have to return one finger manually to the center position. Still no strain.
No blisters, either, on any system. Does that make me hardcore?
I can’t remember the name of the controller I had. It was about 50% larger than the normal controller, with white buttons/d-pad, and 2-speed turbo per button. I ended up playing just about every game with the little thumbstick screwed in. It wasn’t much taller than the analog sticks on current console controllers, and have a small divot on the top to fit the thumb. It was very comfortable!
It was a very sad day when that controller died and I had to go back to using the normal NES controllers. To help alleviate the pain a tiny bit, I moved the d-pad and buttons over from the other controller. I had white buttons, baby!
I think a lot of my issues may also be due to the size of the original NES controller … way to small for my hands/wrists. The Super NES controller was much better for that.
I always hated the NES controller, but loved the Sega Master System one. Instead of four pointy directions, it had a rounded square (so it was MUCH easier to do diagonals) and the buttons convex instead of concave, much as almost all modern controllers are now.
Damn you Sega, why did you have to drop out of the hardware business?
Actually, D-pads indeed have springiness that returns them to neutral.
But not my thumbs. My thumbs remain atop the direction I pushed.
Then you have a weird method of using the buttons, I, like most people have always laid my thumb across the buttons at an angle with the joint resting in the dead center and just rolled my thumb in the position to press the button and used the spring in the controller to reset, I never had to manually raise my thumbs from that position unless I was trying to not pass out in the MGS electric shock torture for the proper ending as you had to spam the buttons way faster then any single finger could manage.
Now that I think of it, you’re absolutely right, and that is how I do use the D-Pad. Bottom of my thumb joint to press down, tip of my thumb to press up, roll it left or right to move accordingly.
I actually registered here just to comment on your posts regarding the controller.
For one thing – it amazes me just how firm and certain your thinking is, and you have absolutely zero evidence of any sort whatsoever to support these certainties.
What makes you certain that the pads don’t return to a neutral position simply by removing your finger(s)?
What makes you certain that the contours of the pads aren’t designed to provide your fingers with acceptable or excellent feedback regarding relative position?
What makes you certain that there’s no way to press the buttons on the pads without lifting your finger(s)?
How in the world can you eyeball a prototype, cgi depiction of this controller, and then decide: “The buttons don’t look terribly responsive”?
Hahaheh, yeah man – I’m with you… just look at those buttons… _clearly_ they’re not all that responsive… if you peer at the computer generated prototype beta images closely enough, you can _just_about_ see the obvious flaw in the electro-capacitators and force-feedback gyros – that’s _definitely_ going to hinder button-response times.
From the release: “Built with high-precision input technologies and focused on low-latency performance” … except well, for the buttons… they forgot about the buttons.
I didn’t say the pads don’t return to neutral, but that your thumbs don’t return to neutral.
I said nothing of the sort. Your fingers don’t relax to neutral though. You have to exert force to achive the neutral position.
Actually, that’s a good point. I don’t know that and we’ll see what we see.
Because small buttons look mushy to me. That’s how they look.
Yah, and press releases are never over-hyped. Note that I didn’t say anything about latency.
I don’t know why so many knee-jerk fanbois show up when criticism like this shows up. I explained my concerns and I’m about 99% confident that it’s not a controller I could ever use for more than a few minutes. However, I’m willing to be surprised — but only by the physical device, not by some Valve fanbois.
Ah – I’m a “kneejerk fanboi” because I pointed out why I thought your posts were full of glaring, kneejerk, assumptions. Tha’ts a pretty low bar to meet in order to achieve fanboy status.
I don’t know how well or how poorly the controller is going to operate until I try it, and until I hear more detailed reviews from competent individuals who have actually used it to play actual games with.
I also don’t know that the buttons are “mashy” by looking at the cgi rendering of the prototype conceptual images.
Edited 2013-10-02 15:48 UTC
So what you’re saying is: you haven’t held one, you haven’t used one, you have no idea how it feels, you have no idea how it works, but you totally know it’s crap and you’ll never use one? Amazing.
Largely, yes. I did say I’d look at a demo. It’s possible I’m wrong, but every example IN HISTORY has shown the same problems with touchpads. I’d be happy to be surprised, but I put the chance at less than 1%.
Note that no one has actually responded to the substance of the criticism….
There is no substance to your criticism, as you just admitted.
I thought the same thing at first. Absolutely not for me. But then I remembered that Steam will support third party controllers. And also realized that the “hackable” nature of the controller means that third party vendors can give me a version that better matches what I want. Also this controller seems designed with more precise FPS and RTS gaming (neither of which I really care about) gaming in mind, so as long as Steam continues to support other, more conventional controllers for the games I do care about (and it seems like custom key mappings are going to be available for all controller games anyways) then their controller design doesn’t really matter to me.
I can’t simply see myself playing a game like mega Man or Super Mario with this controller.
That said, I can see myself playing any mouse based games with my thumbs on it.
That’s what I thought as well. It seems designed for FPS games primarily. I suppose you could make it work for driving sims and such, but what about platformers or sports games?
The description says being super precise it let’s it work well with many genres. Even mentioning playing RTS with it.
I bet they at least tested their design with DotA2. Seeing how it’s a Valve game, and the most played steam game by an order of magnitude.
But does it feel like a ZX Spectrum?
This is gonna flop hard. That and the SteamOS/SteamBox.
Well this week was terrible for Valve announcements. A living abortion, something we already knew and no specs.
Funny. People said similar things about steam itself in it’s early days.
Steam was horrible in the early days. People forget that. But steam is software + infrastructure and was updated to eventually shine.
Not saying otherwise. I’m not talking about the quality on the first iteration.
I’m referring to if it will flop. People said steam was dumb and going to fail. Now look how it’s grown.
Uh, software is easier to iterate. The whole “not being physical” and all.
“They’re on the right track here. If I were Microsoft or Sony, I’d start getting worried.”
I think this was sarcasm?
Mainly because touchscreen keyboards are oh how good, not.
Edited 2013-09-27 20:11 UTC
What we learn from osnews comments:
Don’t try to create anything new. Ever.
Touchpads are not new.
I’m not aware of any other controller that uses touchpads this way. Are you?
No, but we are humans, so when we see a different chair we still know it’s a chair. So when we see touching or motion sensor controllers, we know it’s sheit.
That’s pretty much how we think of your comments too.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play has touchpads instead of sticks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play
…didn’t seem to work too well for SE.
Edited 2013-10-01 16:28 UTC
And you can already largely check out how good or bad this will work, with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play
Valve have hinted at a “good”, “better”, “best” scheme. The “good” is for streaming only and will cost around 100 bucks. The “best” will run games and will cost around 300 bucks.
The flaw in the plan may be that most devs won’t release optimized setting for the $300 dollar machine, making it feel like a low end PC.
I sincerely doubt the “best” Steam Machine will cost around $300. At that price it wouldn’t be able to run anything but the least-intensive indie games natively.
This controller reminded me of this one (http://tinyurl.com/le6nouq)
And that was utter garbage, only because the technology wasn’t ready for such a cheaply-made device.
But, I’m excited for the Steam controller.
It was also done earlier in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xperia_Play
I wonder when the drivers will land in the official Linux kernel. I think it is great that the XBox 360 gamepad drivers are in the official Linux kernel and so these gamepads work out of the box.
Maybe the input part is standadrd HID, then it wouldn’t need any drivers. But the haptic feedback stuff is not covered by HID.
Well now I feel double stupid for having backed the iControlPad 2.
Re-invented controls often don’t work out! Good reason to be skeptical of this controller!
It won’t even have a chance unless there are games that take this controller and make it awesome, and said games are also awesome. Like the Wii when it came out, unless you have something backing up the controller, people will just forget about it and grab a regular controller.
The same can be said about touch interface. It works very well in certain types of games, but on most it just does not give you the same amount of precision.
“Where Microsoft and Sony show zero innovation with the Xbox One and the PS4, Valve is the one pushing limits.”
This made me giggle, hah.
Valve is desperately trying to figure out how to climb out of the hole that is Windows 8. They presented an OS that’s not compatible with the vast majority of PC games, a “machine” that still has all the drawbacks of a PC when competing in the mass market and, finally, a controller that aims to fix a problem that nobody needs fixed: how to play games that are better on KB/M on a controller.
As far as the gaming business go the innovation comes from game creators, not platform holders. The winning platform will be the one that is cheap enough for consumers and easy enough for developers to be successful. I don’t see Valve tackling any of this.
Hasn’t been a problem for consoles. I mean, my PS3 can’t play PS2 – games, either, nor can e.g. the SNES play NES – games and yet it hasn’t been a showstopper.
And it also has all the advantages, too. But you curiously decided to ignore that fact.
Don’t try to make the claim that your needs or desires equal those of everyone else.
I really have to point out that Valve are a platform holder and that they got to the point they are in through innovation…
Steam is free and so is SteamOS. Can’t get much cheaper than that. Also, as you could see in the links I posted earlier devs mostly say Valve’s APIs are high-quality and easy to develop for.
Its not designed to replace keyboard/mouse, but it was designed so that you will no longer bring your wireless mouse/keyboard at your sofa.
“instead of two inaccurate joysticks, it has two super-precise touchpads”
Really? Really?
Personally I worry for whatever one will get tired in the thumbs from using this kind of controller since you’re pushing against a more or less solid surface the whole time.
To say Microsoft and Sony should be worried about this new Valve controller before you’ve held one in your hand premature to say the least. In my opinion there’s nothing amazing or really even cool about this new controller. If anything it’s more like a step backwards. I’ll reserve final judgment until I have the chance to use one first-hand but at first glance, I’m not impressed.