Valve Shows How Steam Controller Works In Real Life

sfcrazy writes "Valve Software have demonstrated how the controller works in the real world with popular games like Portal 2, Civilization V, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve has posted a video on their YouTube channel to give users a glimpse of the Steam Controller experience."

Very nice!

[RyanFenton]

A very good video showing movement mapped to real gameplay.

The obvious: It's not QUITE as 1-1 as a mouse with 4 inches of control surface.

But I'd still rate it a bit higher than a trackball, which is high praise from me, since I really enjoy using trackball inputs when a mouse isn't convenient.

This is a real accomplishment in input innovation - even without considering the dynamic haptic feedback portion of the design.

I'd be amazed, if this works as advertised, if Sony and Microsoft don't push for a copycat controller very rapidly - especially given the PC-like nature of their new consoles.

The remaining challenge: How would it fare against a 360/Dualshock controller in specialized console games. From what I've heard from developers so far:

Super Meat Boy dev trys out the Steam controller [polygon.com]

It sounds like it's a good compromise overall - but it's still got some hurdles to clear to being "the best" - but man, it sounds promising so far!

Ryan Fenton

Don't compare it to gamepads.

[Jartan]

I've seen a lot of comments naming specific scenarios where a gamepad is better. That's completely pointless. If a gamepad is better in that scenario then you'll just use a gamepad.

The entire purpose of this thing is mouse/kb games.

Old idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The Triax Turbo Touch 360 [wikipedia.org] tried this LONG before Valve. I had one. It was a novel idea at the time but didn't work so great and earned a spot at #9 on IGN's list of worst controllers: "Dear Control Engineers: Please don't remove the D-pad on a controller in favor of a touch-sensitive surface. You may try to con fighting gamers into thinking it'll make smooth circular motions easier, but you may not realize they like to rest their thumb on the pad when idle. Thanks. Your Pal, Craig"

Re:This actually isn't half bad

[houstonbofh]

I think the entire point was to show how good it was with existing games not specifically written for it. (Since that will be the majority of the games out there on the release day.)