The Steam Machine and Steam Frame are probably delayed, but they still intend to release them in the first half of this year.
They said they planned to have a concrete launch window and pricing by now, but hardware pricing/shortages have made that hard to pin down.
I purchased mine for full price too. Unfortunately I do not like it for various reasons. Missing dpad and second stick, and holding it is a bit uncomfortable to my hands. And at the early days Steam Input wasn’t this refined. But I loved using it to play with gyro controls. But will keep it, its history. :-)
The new controller is based on the Steam Deck controls and vastly superior to me (if we assume its like that). I can’t imagine you don’t liking it as much as the old controller.
Steam Controller really comes into it’s own when you rely on both touchpads.
I usually map the left joystick to the left touchpad on touch, and if I need options for the D-pad map them to the joysticks instead or even touchpad 4 button click.
For side scrolling platformers I just map the D Pad to the left touchpad on touch, and ABXY to the right touchpad on touch.