Steam Controller - will it be love or hate?

So, the folks at +Valve and +Steam have listed the Steam controller in all its glory on the Steam Store and the Steam Universe site.

According to Valve, the controller will be available from November 2015 for $49.99. 


Some tech journalists have had a try out and reported mixed feelings. The consensus seems to be that it's a bit, well, unusual. Whilst I've not picked one up yet, I have to say that I do fear that they might only succeed if the games are designed around the controller. Harking back to the Nintendo64 (what do you mean you weren't born then!?) with it's new-fangled, tri-pronged, analogue/digital hybrid gamepad this took some getting used to, but N64 games (e.g. Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, Pilotwings 64, Turok) felt like they had been designed with the N64 gamepad in mind (in fact, some had been). Soon, it felt like this gamepad was the most natural way to control a game, especially Super Mario 64. In my humble opinion, it's the best controller I've ever used, but let's not get on to that now. If you revisited Super Mario 64 on the Wii with the Wii's classic controller, you'll know how it just didn't feel right - this demonstrates how important it is for the game to fit the controller.

It takes practice and perserverance to get used to a new control input, particularly if the new design is radical. The change from digital d-pads to analogue sticks took some getting used to but of course, all console makers were on the same band-wagon, so it created its own momentum, and was unlikely to fail - everyone wanted the new generation of 32 or 64-bit consoles back in the '90s, and the new analogue gamepads that came with them.

My concern is that regardless of how good the design is of the Steam controller, and of how much potential it might have for better control than the Xbox360 controller, I believe its success (i.e. how many are sold) depends as much upon first-rate marketing as it does AAA games being designed specifically for the Steam controller.

If players feel the Steam controller is restrictive, either before buying or after, and revert to keyboard and mouse, then it's doomed.

I really hope that as we draw nearer to November we hear the media singing this controller's praises, and developers announcing they have built their game control mechanics around the Steam controller.

I, for one, am hoping this is the successful birth of a new generation of control pads, as we saw in the 1990's with digital to analogue.