We’ve known for a while that Valve wants to relocate from the desktop to the living room. It was only a matter of time before they showed off what they had in mind. It seemed to be a multi-tiered, third party produced, Linux based Gaming PC running a custom SteamOS that is deigned to connect to your TV and stream any non-Linux games you might own. Newell’s strange linux based machine might catch on and it might not. Either way, the controller is absolutely bonkers and it’s probably a bad move. Here’s why:
The stickless controller, instead opting for two clickable and ultra sensitive track pads, is meant to give the user a much higher fidelity of movement to make up for not having a mouse. Inside the pads are strong electro-magnets that provide haptic feedback and give the impression of resistance. At the center is a touch screen that will have controls mapped to it and there is a physical button at each corner of the screen. At the top of the controller are two shoulder buttons and in place of bumpers are buttons on the inside of the grips
Now, I honestly think the haptic trackpads are a potentially amazing idea and might end up being the most interesting advancement controllers have seen in years. The problem is that this potentially game-changing idea has been bogged down by the rest of the controller’s design.
Controllers arent the place to make a statement about your device. They aren’t for aesthetics, either. If form follows function in anything, it’s in controllers and there are plenty of failed consoles that learned that the hard way. Look at the grips on the Steam controller, then look at a 360 controller backwards. My 360 controller fits my hands perfectly, and this looks like the reverse of that.
Now let’s look for a second at the placement of the buttons: The X and Y buttons, the left half of the touch screen, and the leftmost button in the bottom row, are all inaccessible by the right thumb. That’s at least 5 buttons (assuming the touch screen is fitting two buttons on each half) that you have to take your thumb off of the left pad to hit. Which means, in most games, you’ll have to stop moving.
I love Steam. These days, almost every game I play is through Steam. I’m not saying it’ll be bad. It might be super comfortable, and the button placements might make total sense when I start playing games on it. But it might turn out horribly. I feel like at this point we’ve got a pretty good idea of what works in a controller, and innovation is always a good thing, but innovation and experimentation are two different things. Maybe I’m just gun shy about controllers after seeing what Nintendo has been putting out the last few years, but maybe Steam’s new PC/console hybrid should be taking a more moderate approach this time around and save their wackier ideas for when the thing has actually caught on. The track pad stuff is really cool. Start there, wait a year, THEN start moving the buttons out of my reach.
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