When Valve’s Steam Controller was first released, it featured a touchscreen in the middle of the controller. But as of yesterday, Valve has decided to drop the trackpad and replace it with physical buttons.
The controller is only in its early stages of beta and should be expected to change a lot more, but I must say I’m not impressed with Steam’s current direction.
The Steam Controller’s track pad has been replaced with standard controls: two sets of A, B, X, Y buttons. Here is a picture of the old controller, shown at CES. Below that is the most recent picture of the Steam Controller.
When Valve began talk of a new controller, they had promised a revolutionary new gamepad. And I’m not sure they have quite met that goal yet.
On the bright side, Valve says the Steam Controller will allow up to 16 controllers at once! Though I can’t quite see the need for quite so many
I still have faith in Valve. They have given us so many amazing things including:
- the Half-Life series
- Team Fortress
- the Portal series
- Counter-Strike
- Day of Defeat
- Dota 2
- and Steam
I won’t let this lackluster controller get me down just yet — Valve has a long way to go but if anyone can revolutionize game controllers, it’s going to be Valve.
