Steam Deck @sopuli.xyz Fubarberry @sopuli.xyz 3 wk. ago

Hori’s officially licensed Steam controller is coming to the US

www.theverge.com Hori’s officially licensed Steam controller is coming to the US

You can preorder it ahead of its December 16th release.

$60, has capacitive joysticks, gyro, steam menu buttons, and 4 extra buttons. Fully supported in Steam Input.

However, no track pads or vibration.

61 comments

This is cool and all, but no rumble is kind of a deal breaker for me
- Yeah, I was totally on board till I got to that part. What an absurd exclusion :/
  
  Go figure. I usually turn rumble off.
  
  Yeah. When the early PS3 controllers did it everyone agreed it was stupid and eventually they made the DualShock 3.
- I never use rumble, having no rumble to me is a pro
- Same. I've got multiple 8bitdo products and I was still considering one, but no rumble is just weird.
Without all the features that actually made the Steam Controller great... yeah
- I don't understand how they got the official steam brand name, it's just a mid-end controller with some major features missing.
  
  They probably pay lots of money for it
Cool, I like the capacitive sticks, but not what I’m waiting for. I want a Steam controller 2 that’s a Deck without the touchscreen. Anything less and I’m not really interested
- I'd like it kinda like the PlayStation controller with the pad in the center.
  
  Now that you mention it, is there a way to make the pad work on the steam deck in those controllers?
I still regularly use my original Steam Controller -- for the trackpads. It allows me to do M+KB strategy gaming from the couch.

This lacks the killer feature, IMHO, given that I can use any of a wide variety of regular Bluetooth controllers for stuff with controller support.
- What really sets the Steam Controller (and the Steam Deck's control layout) apart from the market are the dual touchpads and dynamically/easily programmable buttons. The above just looks like a reskinned XBox controller, and, if I read the article right, it needs a "companion app" to get full functionality out of the controller.
  
  I hope that they at least made sure that the companion app works on the Steam Deck.
  
  From what I understand, steam input has full support for it as well. As in it will show the controller in steam, and let you program back buttons/capacitive sticks/etc.
  
  I think you only need the companion app if you aren't using steam.
  
  Edit:
  
  Not having the touchpads is a big downside, but this still fills a huge niche that the others dont. My Xbox elite controller is cool and all, but has neither a gyro nor capacitive joysticks. My dualsense has a gyro, but no capacitive touch so I need to activate it with a button hold or leave it always on.
  
  The Xbox and PS5 controller also don't treat the paddles as independent buttons by default, so you need an extra layer of software on PC that allows mapping those buttons to arbitrary inputs. Steam Input can overwrite this sometimes, but it's very inconsistent on a game + hardware basis. The companion app is a concerning "feature". Hopefully it's just marketing trying to make up a fancy phrase for "hardware driver".
$60 is a lot for two extra buttons and no vibration. Gyro is nice, if it actually works with games though.

I feel like they missed an opportunity by not replacing the d-pad with a track pad.
- I think it has 4 extra buttons, in addition to the back buttons there are two extra buttons under the dpad and right thumb stick.
  
  Those are the back pedals.
  It has two extra Menu buttons. Not the most exciting thing in controller design.
You're still better off with something from 8Bit-do at that price. If they included trackpads and vibration it would've been a nice Steam Controller v2.
- Yeah the track pads are so cool! I don't use mine much, but for RPGs with a lot of abilities being able to setup little touch menus is indispensable. Considering the deck has the same interface it makes complete sense for docked mode to have an equivalent device.
A shame it doesn't have hall effect thumbsticks (and vibration), but more quality controllers I will not shake a stick at.
I don't care about rumble vibration, but the missing trackpads is huge. The trackpads from the Steam Deck are game changing. At least one would be good to have, so I can program it with additional functionalities or custom menus in Steam. I probably still end up buying it to replace the Xbox Series S controller, as the Hori has gyro integrated, has touch sensors on the sticks and has back pedals.

My hope is, this controller will be sold through Steam, as it is officially licensed.
Fuck yes no rumble to remove. Definitely looking into this. Fuck rumble imo
I want one with trackpads
- Don't we all
I didn't know rumble was such a popular feature. It's one of the first things I turn off in every game.
While I'd like it to have rumble and trackpads, I pre-ordered one (to Canada).

I just want the xbox button layout with proper motion controls, which it seems like this delivers on, and with a bonus of actual back buttons (that can be mapped in Steam, unlike when controllers emulate Xbox or switch controllers)
DoA without rumble.
When can I use my Steamdeck as a controller? I will literally settle for that level of stupidness if we can’t have controller v2.

Aside: happy to see that it has some form of back paddles - but If Steam will allow them to be configured is another issue I’ve encountered.
- Both the back paddles and gyro are things that are great, and every gamepad should have them, but there's almost no compatibility with anything on PC.
  
  Most I've ever seen is being able to change a button to a back paddle. Not even remapping a key, just a face or shoulder button. I swap it with the stick press buttons (L&R3). But it'd be great to be able to actually remap keys.
  
  Steam itself has remapping functionality to extend any gamepad with customization. You can remap (and much more than just rempap) all keys and elements of a gamepad through the Steam Controller setup. People have uploaded their configurations, so you can download them. But this extended custom functionality is only for Steam.
- You can technically stream your game to your deck, and it will work as a controller. If you have the OLED deck you can use something like magicblack Decky plugin to turn off the screen while playing
  
  What I really want is a Wii-U like experience lol
- I've read you can use your steam deck as a controller by using virtualhere Haven't tried it personally yet
Touch capacitance on the stick is a gyro-must for me, so im happy to finally see a controller with this. actually just ordered this from amazon japan, didnt think it would actually get a US release.
Anyone know how good Hori's d-pad is?
It looked good, but the gyro is apparently awful and the trigger travel is basically non-existent.
- description says no vibration at all. For $60?!
  
  I don't know how many people vibe with this, but the PS5's high definition super Hitachi wand rumble or whatever is literally my favorite thing about it. I can't imagine going for no vibration at all.
  
  Hmm, I'll stick with my Logitech F310 then.
I've preordered it. I have a few hori controllers. Some are worse than others. Even though its design is pretty much identical to their switch controller, I honestly want to give it a try. My goto controllers lately have been the PS5 controller and the Gamsir g7 se. I have been playing everything recently on Bazzite so it's been fun to try out different controllers for different games.
if i didn't have a billion Stadia controllers i might.
- Yeah I have 4 stadia controllers, and they're great. But I do miss gyro/back buttons.
  
  Lol, so many of us with crazy amounts of Stadia controllers. I even gave away like 3 and still have 4 🤣
12x more than I paid for the real Steam Controller and only a fraction of the features. Was hoping it would be priced more affordably
- Real steam controller needs more buttons and another joystick though. When many games are designed around a standard controller, the steam controller can be awkward to use.
Some good news today 🙏

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