Important edit: The Steam Controller is not totally out of stock. They are toggling availability to limit orders. If you have not yet gotten one, continue checking the site.
Who all managed to get one?
Who’s with me in the “impatiently has to wait for them to return to stock” camp?
What excites you most about the Steam Controller?
I just snag one.
Man I had a hard time battling with myself. On one side, I really want one and was waiting years for this even before the Steam Deck was on the market. On the other hand, my limit was 90 Euros (taxes included). And worse than that, it only functions with Steam. Yes, duh you say, its in the name, the Steam Controller. My hope was I could use it as a replacement for my controller acting as a regular gamepad without all the bells and whistles, playing emulators without Steam too. Looks like my that is not gonna happen anytime soon.
Are you alright with Steam running in the background? As far as I know, that’s all that’s really needed to get the full functionality outside of Steam for most uses. It’ll just be using whatever you have set up as your desktop profile. For other things, programs like SISR already exist too.
That is what I know so far too. I think the original Steam Controller (I have one too) acted the same. Didn’t use it for long time. And no, my hope was I could use the controller without Steam in the background too. In example whenever I want to use an emulator like Yuzu or a set of emulators with RetroArch, I would also need to launch Steam in the background. And having Steam AND RetroArch at the same time is troublesome for my non Steam controller, as they get in conflict and I have to close Steam in example.
So that was a longer way of saying, no, I am not alright to run Steam in the background for stuff I am not playing in Steam.
In that case, definitely check out SISR if you want that functionality in Linux or Windows. It mentions emulators in particular as a use case. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything like it for Android which I saw you mention in another comment.
Good thing is, I don’t care about Android. I saw some user drivers too and they will most likely add support for the new controller. Maybe I use it, maybe not. At least I still have my regular gamepad and will just leave both connected. Guess there are worse problems to have. :D
Yeah, I’m not too worried in general. Valve devices tend to have pretty vibrant DIY communities grow up around them, both on the software and hardware side. I’m looking forward to seeing what 3D printed accessories exist in a few months myself.
And third party accessories are already created too, such as a stand for the controller acting as a dock. It’s the only one I have seen, so that’s why I mentioned it. And thanks to the replaceable parts, this will make it even easier for DIY people. I’m not much of hardware customization, but it’s always fascinating to see what others do.
I definitely don’t go into it as far as a lot of people do, but some customizations are too nice to ignore. The original Vive (basically Valve hardware in all but name) had a mod that swapped the straps for welding mask supports and added off-ear speakers much like the Index later got. That was absolutely a massive upgrade.
You have to actually launch the game through steam for it to work as a controller. It’s actually worse than the OG controller since I’m pretty sure the left stick and face buttons still acted as normal xinput devices.
On the Steam Deck you can switch to a pure gamepad mode by holding down the start button. They first implemented that with Steam running and later added it to the Linux driver so that it works even when Steam isn’t running.
I would be very surprised if they don’t do the same with the Steam Controller.
I sure hope it works that way. Because I have a few non steam games I play often and I hate unnecessarily launching stuff through steam. I guess I’ll find out in 6-10 days.
I am jealous of you mr fuckwit mcbumcrumble.
I’m pretty sure it’ll still work without Steam, you just might not have all the bells and whistles. But according to the site, it can connect to anything with Bluetooth.
No it doesn’t. You must use steam input for it to be anything more than a mouse per the GN review.
I think someone will cook up a driver sooner or later then
Are you sure about that? There are people testing the Bluetooth connection on Android if I remember right, it would only act as mouse and keyboard device. On desktop I don’t know if anyone tested Bluetooth, but using the Dongle it only acts as mouse and keyboard device, until Steam launched.
But in general, I always ignore Bluetooth and only use 2.4ghz dongles (or similar). I’m not getting into this argumentation over or against Bluetooth, so please spare me that (since decades). But I’m curious how it acts with Bluetooth, without starting Steam.
No controller should be proprietary to one launcher on PC. This is classic valve being platform exclusive dicks.