I think they truly didn’t anticipate the volume of people interested in the controller.
If you’re getting the Steam Machine 2.0, you’re probably going to get at least one Steam Controller 2.0, since it’s the closest thing to an “official” Steam Machine controller, and it’s designed to let you do a reasonable job of playing mouse-based games (which Steam has lots of) from the couch (and the Steam Machine is aiming at the living room). The two products kinda go together like peanut butter and jelly.
But…the Steam Machine 2.0 is deferred, so the people buying a Steam Controller now are buying one to use on a PC, either for use at a desk or some non-Valve-built living-room PC, which I think is probably harder for Valve to predict demand for.
Steam Machine comes with a built-in wireless adapter, just for pairing with Steam Controller. (Up to four with a single adapter!) This means you can pair your Steam Controller without its puck, and you can wake your Steam Machine without leaving your couch.
I mean, they say that it has wireless support for remote power-on for it, but nothing on that page that I see says that the Steam Machine comes with a Steam Controller. They might do some bundle with a discount that includes both, and I could totally believe that, but…
Oh, I didn’t think of that. If Valve did something like subtracting Machine wishlists from Controller wishlists to estimate the number of people wanting to buy the Controller to use by itself, that leaves a lot of room for underestimating the overlap. I probably contributed to this too by wishlisting the Machine despite not being sure I actually want it. If you only wishlisted the Controller, I may have taken your spot. Oops. Sorry, guys.
If you’re getting the Steam Machine 2.0, you’re probably going to get at least one Steam Controller 2.0, since it’s the closest thing to an “official” Steam Machine controller, and it’s designed to let you do a reasonable job of playing mouse-based games (which Steam has lots of) from the couch (and the Steam Machine is aiming at the living room). The two products kinda go together like peanut butter and jelly.
But…the Steam Machine 2.0 is deferred, so the people buying a Steam Controller now are buying one to use on a PC, either for use at a desk or some non-Valve-built living-room PC, which I think is probably harder for Valve to predict demand for.
The Steam Machine will include a Steam Controller.
You sure? I don’t think I remember seeing that.
goes looking
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
I mean, they say that it has wireless support for remote power-on for it, but nothing on that page that I see says that the Steam Machine comes with a Steam Controller. They might do some bundle with a discount that includes both, and I could totally believe that, but…
Oh, I didn’t think of that. If Valve did something like subtracting Machine wishlists from Controller wishlists to estimate the number of people wanting to buy the Controller to use by itself, that leaves a lot of room for underestimating the overlap. I probably contributed to this too by wishlisting the Machine despite not being sure I actually want it. If you only wishlisted the Controller, I may have taken your spot. Oops. Sorry, guys.
I’ve heard they’ll bundle those or at least planning to but given they already ran out of controllers I’m not too optimistic.