Valve Releases New Steam Controller Images

Developer Valve has just released new photos of their updated prototype for the Steam Controller, which was announced in September.

Revealed alongside plans for a SteamOS and Steam Machines—Valve’s planned range of gaming consoles—the Steam Controller made waves most notably for its unique touchpad-oriented design. These dual trackpads are designed to serve as a replacement for the standard thumbsticks used by most modern controllers.

However, images released this weekend of a modified prototype show a more traditional-looking button heavy design, while still keeping its signature trackpads. Valve also plans to integrate haptics (tactile feedback like the vibrations of DualShock controllers) into the controller to offset the “less physical” nature of trackpad input, in the formed of more precise and targeted physical feedback.

The Steam Controller is designed to be compatible with both PC/Mac gaming and the future Steam Machines, with the goal of giving “Steam gamers” a similar input to what they’re used to with computers.

Using their original design for the controller, Valve provided a diagram illustrating what controller bindings might look like for the popular game Portal 2:

The Steam Controller is also designed with user hacking in mind, with Valve noting that they hope to encourage users to “meaningfully contribute to the design of the Steam Controller” in the spirit of the prolific game modifications the Steam community is famous for.