Steam Hardware

Sony added a screen to their controller to create a handheld, whereas Valve removed the screen from their handheld to create a controller.

The real question is "does it have a way to wake a steamdeck up from sleep"

I actually love the touchpads, but it weird that I'm thinking about this more in the context of a media center PC than actually playing games? I definitely wouldn't use this for all games unless the form factor was really good.

Because, trying to operate Desktop Mode docked on Steam Deck with a controller is...painful, and this controller would be perfect for jumping into a web browser for streaming sites that don't have Kodi add-ons (Kanopy and Patreon are two that come to mind).

My only worry is the ergonomics of it. They had to cram so much that it looks like the sticks and buttons are too far up while the track pads are too far down. I haven't used a steam deck, but it does look more comfortable than this controller does. I hope it doesn't end up with that feeling of nothing being in a really comfortable place (except the triggers and bumpers).

I hope the d-pad is better than the steamdeck one, other than that I'm looking forward to it.

I kept wondering what the shape reminded me of.
It's the Absolute Batman logo.

Ah, I see they went for the Duke's size and shape. Bold choice, we'll have to see how that works out.

The video of two people playing the steam deck with two steam controllers in a fast food joint. Completely natural scenario! Just casually bringing your steam deck and two steam controllers to a fast food joint. Feels like they want to copy the nintendo switch advertisements, but it's not comparable at all since the switch is smaller and has the joycons which you can use as make-do controllers for e.g. public places.

Magnetic hall-effect thumbsticks

SEE NINTENDO?! IT'S NOT THAT HARD!!

As a big fan of the Steam Deck something I want to emphasize here is that even if you didn't want both the joysticks and the touchpads on the Steam Controller and wish they had picked one or the other, this kind of setup means the controller has essentially the same layout as the Steam Deck which is HUGE for ease of finding custom control schemes already uploaded by the community for complex games.

I prefer joysticks+gyro over touchpads for aiming and so for me the touchpads might seem superfluous, but in reality I heavily use them for virtual menus in all of my control schemes I make for complex games with lots of controls and inputs. The nice thing is that even though I am in the minority of people in that I prefer joysticks + gyro over touchpad for aiming, because the Steam Deck and Steam Controller both have two touchpads and two joysticks, somebody who is touchpad centric can use a control scheme I make pretty much right out of the box just by flip flopping the touchpad and joystick bindings so the virtual menus live on the joysticks instead.

I think this will be one of the subtle things people look back on and credit the Steam Deck and now new Steam Controller for having, it might seem silly and extraneous to have both touchpads and joysticks but it opens up a very wide range of capability and also makes it easier for touchpad and joystck focused players to share custom keybinding schemes with each other.

Hold up, Steam Frame? New Valve VR hardware??

That looks uncomfortable to hold ngl.

Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor.

I'm more excited about this tbh. It'll be quite something if Valve ends up solving the firmware problems of Linux on snapdragon powered phones.

I'm so thrilled for a new steam controller. I was a huge fan of the original, I just wish it were built Better. I hope the new one is built well, I'm planning to purchase one as I think it will be a good controller for my flight sims

Touchpads on the Deck are really great for on screen menus for things like ability bars and whatnot.

But this isn't the first Steam Controller, is it? The first one (and also the first Steam Machine) was released on 2015.

As someone who was an absolutely massive fan of the original Steam Controller (in fact I still have two of them) I absolutely love these. Yes I know they're clearly a different design but like last time they seem absolutely perfect for my larger hands. The touchpads seem to be less of a primary focus but honestly im just happy that they included them at all especially two of them. Also USB C plus rechargeable battery and four back buttons instead of two, this is absolutely everything I could have hoped for and then some.

I really hope that with the release of this sc-controller either starts being maintained or somebody makes a fork of it that is (standalone original steam controller/steam deck/steaminput driver)