This guy will have to wait for his younger brother.
It was available to buy starting noon local time. I refreshed the page until the buy option became available, but kept getting an error when submitting payment. Waited about half an hour and now it’s sold out. Ni modo I guess.
DO NOT BUY THEM FROM EBAY!
or any other one of those websites … the resellers are scum and you’ve waited this long, you can wait longer! hold strong!
Take it from me guys, I was the early adopter and my experience showed me that as great as they were, they suffered major build problems that were only exposed when in the hands of millions. The second round of builds were much better.
I have been drooling for this controller for years, but I’m more than happy to be patient this round.
For those wondering I went through 17. I have no reason to lie, I love them so much I only used them, but they broke so easily.
They did a hardware launch perfectly for the Deck - Account of minimum age needed, and a queue to buy as devices became available. Why the hell did they go with the old, shit version that only serves scalpers that use bots to scoop up every item?
So headlines will say “sold out in minutes!!!” and create FOMO for the second wave. That’s my guess at least.
It’ll be in stock again soon I’m certain. They’re gamepads, not limited edition Pokemon cards or super cutting edge HBM memory chips
I barely managed to get one, had to spend well over 20 minutes spamming the continue button, because the first couple of times I passed that screen something else failed (they even charged me one of those times but the purchase didn’t finish, so I imagine it will get reverted in a while).
I liked my old steam controller more in theory than in practice, I still have it and use it occasionally but it’s more of a rarity when I think the features make up for the lack of d-pad and right stick. But the Steam Deck is just ideal for me, from the moment I grabbed it I have been wanting a standalone controller with that same format and inputs.
In any case, sorry you didn’t get one now, I’m sure they’ll be back in stock very quickly, it’s likely they did a small batch first to test the waters on how much people wanted this. But production is probably ramping up just like what happened with the Steam Deck.
Oh, the picture is an old controller? What’s different about the new one?
Much closer to the steam deck. So has proper d pad, 2 analogue sticks with 2 square touch pads. Also has 4 back buttons, and capacitive touch sections on the grips. Has a few other features as well.
Why would you ever need more than one button to go back?
Oh… a button, that is on the back?
Yeah I realized my mistake halfway through writing this.
The original was great for games that weren’t made for a normal controller. And FPS games.
Just give it a week and they’ll be back in stock.
Hey, at least you didn’t camp in front of the store and waited for hours in the freezing cold to go home empty handed. That’s how new hardware releases used to be. They haven’t restocked the Steam Deck in months but they will restock the controller soon, I believe.
I know. I was expecting issues, though. Steam pretty much always has issues with their site at the start of sales and new hardware launches, so this was entirely predictable.
On the flip side, every time this has happened when I was around to notice, there were obvious signs the site was failing from the get-go. Slow page loads, error messages, pages just not loading at all, etc. This time around, the site loaded up fine. Page navigation was quick as normal. Buttons worked. Cart worked. Checkout seemed to be working.
Then BAM. Error message when paying. I tried a few different payment methods and even checked on other devices.
So, I stepped away for a bit. Came back and I was surprised that the controllers were still in stock. Figured I’d try again. That time, I got a different error message when I attempted to pay. I thought maybe there’s something fishy with my cart/session so I removed the controller from my cart, expecting to re-add it and try checking out again. Only, when I went back to the controller page, it had flipped over to out of stock. It was literally only a matter of maybe 20 seconds since I’d last checked the page when it was showing as in stock. Missed it by that much.
Ah, one of the dozen people who actually liked the original Steam controller! A rare sight indeed.
I actually didn’t like it very much. Had to dig it out of a drawer for this photo. The face buttons are in an awkward position and the left trackpad is a terrible D-pad substitute. But I loved the gyro, and if it didn’t invent grip buttons it was my first exposure to them at least, and both MS and Nintendo liked them, too, since the Xbox elite controller and switch 2 pro controller have them. I saw the potential and looked forward to Valve improving it, and by all accounts this new iteration is an improvement.
I’m also a sucker for mold-breaking attempts at better ergonomics. I own a Twiddler. Still can’t get the hang of it, but nothing ventured nothing gained.
The old one was great if you just dropped the idea if twin sticks. I switched to a flick stick like setup without the stick and it changed the whole game. It only became unusable after I got the steam deck. I can’t live without the touchpad menus.
Exact same, I loved the features but it just wasn’t very comfortable in my hands. The steam deck feels way better to me, and the new controller looks like that minus the screen, so I’ve been super excited for this.
That’s interesting. The comfort was the number 1 feature of the original controller for me. The deck is the one hurting my wrists.
I guess it depends on the shape and size of your hands. For me the Steam controller sucked, the xbox controller fits much better in my hands but also isn’t quite right sometimes.
I’ve heard a lot of other anecdotes from people who found the og controller really comfortable when others weren’t, so you’re definitely not alone there. Personally, I was constantly readjusting my grip but could never find that illusive sweet spot, so after awhile I’d start straining and cramping. I had a couple bumping around for a few years that I pulled out occasionally but I eventually sold them on eBay when their prices skyrocketed and mine were just collecting dust.
I loved my OG steam controller! I wished I had bought more than one when it died 7 years later. Thing was bomb proof. Never had any other controller last that long say for anything built after the N64 anyway.
It took a lot of getting used to. So great for pc games.
Hoping the new one is just as durable. I guess it’s reparable too!
How did it die? I’ve never had any problems with mine because I baby it.
I don’t even remember what happened. Mourned her every time I had to buy a ps5 controller ever since.
I’m going to see if I have her packed away somewhere and if I do I’ll give an update.
For me one of my controllers shoulder buttons failed. I tracked down the switch and soldiered on a new one. On another one of the back buttons broke and I had to print a new back plate for it. Also on my heavily used steam controllers the stick is now getting drift. But I have 4 of them. Two still new in box.
I also could not get a new steam controller and I really want one.
why is today reminisce about projector day?
I used the OG steam controller when I had a projector setup, I’d turn my office chair (that I used at home) around to look at the wall instead of the computer and use the virtual keyboard/mouse for films or watching stuff, or even playing games. Although it did take a lot to adapt to some which I preferred to use a regular controller. I forget if it was Just Cause 3/4 I played the shit out of with the steam controller or something else.
Oof. That’s rough. But given how insanely profitable these ~90 minutes must have been for Valve, I’m sure they’ll be back in stock in a few weeks since none of the components seem to have supply issues.
I managed to get one by just spam-clicking the continue button for about two minutes. I know, I’m part of the problem.
I never do that because there’s not much I need enough to commit that much, but also because I’m worried that the next week thirty of them will show up on my doorstep and I’ll realize I’m broke.
I managed to get one by just spam-clicking the continue button for about two minutes. I know, I’m part of the problem.
I tried that too but stopped because I thought it might think I was a bot.
Maybe they would have lost money overall. The store being down for 45 minutes, is not good fo business.
While true, they still sold out.
They certainly did.
Same except for about 20 minutes, and that’s after wasting like 5 minutes looking for my wallet lol, so apparently I bought one of the last ones in stock
I knew the inventory would be sold in minutes, so I prepped. I loaded 150 EUR into my Steam wallet in case the 99 didn’t include taxes, I double checked that my shipping and billing info is automatically filled in, and I made sure to be at my computer one hour before the release time just in case I fucked up the time zone conversion.
Same here but with a 100. Had to spam click on payment but it went through after a couple of tries
I actually got kinda lucky in that respect, I learned last week that it was coming out today, but I didn’t know when, and I stupidly didn’t set any reminders or anything. Thankfully I happened to remember the sale this morning and was able to find out the time it started literally 10 minutes before it went live.
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You can always go pay 2-3x and buy one from ebay… it’s super convenient and you also pay them the shipping!
/s
They’ve released more in waves with other hardware. Just keep checking on the hour for the first few hours, keep subscribed to reddit/Lemmy subs of steam. Or stay up till 10pm, midnight and watch again tomorrow at the same time as this release.
the price point isn’t outrageous, but it’s not compelling when an Xbox controller can be bought for a third the price. Track-pads are nice, but people playing Steam are often sitting right next to a keyboard and mouse anyway.
An xbox controller can be bought for a 3rd of the price
A used or older model one, maybe.
A new one is only $20 cheaper at $80.
As a steamdeck owner, the ability to use the trackpads to play old keyboard/mouse games without having to sit at a computer, is great. I’ve been playing a lot of Dungeon Siege and Baldur’s Gate 2, released in early 2000’s with mouse/keyboard in mind, and they both work flawlessly.
The new Steam Controller is a welcome addition because the old Steam Controller doesn’t have the same button and joystick layout, plus its missing buttons, compared to the steamdeck. So when you want to dock the steamdeck and play your favorite first person shooter for example, and game on the TV in the livingroom, there’s no controller until now that matches what you’ve become accustomed to expecting with muscle memory, from playing on the steam deck.
Xbox controllers are bad. I have two with stick drift. The steam controller has TMR sticks. They should never drift as long as the springs don’t wear out. They also have a few other goodies. They are more comparable to the Xbox elite controller.
They don’t even have gyro. I used Xbox controllers for many years but nowadays they feel like something from ancient times.
Well, first of all an Xbox controller costs around 50 which is not a third of the price. Secondly the Xbox controller has literally less than half the inputs of the steam controller: Xbox controller has a d-pad, 2 joysticks, 2 triggers, 4 face buttons, 2 top buttons, play/pause buttons and the special power button; whereas the Steam controller also has 4 back buttons, 4 capacitive sensors, gyro, 2 trackpads (each of which on its own has a ridiculous amount of possibilities for usage) and 2 special buttons which are kinda irrelevant here. And that’s without mentioning the fact that TMR sticks are ridiculously better than traditional ones of the Xbox controller, or that the dongle works on a dedicated bandwidth instead of Bluetooth for the Xbox controller (because the dongle is sold separately I’m not considering it here, otherwise you need to add 20 to the total and then it’s DEFINITELY not a third of the price) so latency is much better.
Also, I’m not near a keyboard and mouse most of the time when playing, as I usually play on my TV. If I were near a mouse and keyboard I wouldn’t need a controller to begin with.











