Valve Demonstrates New Handheld Gaming Controller, Will Be Compatible With Steam for Mac

[baryon]

I think this is a really good idea. No idea whether it's as accurate as a keyboard/mouse, but it really should be, if not more accurate, for it to make sense.

Using a keyboard and mouse to move is a bit silly, since these devices were never designed for gaming. Although it works very well, it would make a lot of sense to consolidate them into one, ergonomic, handheld device.

I find that mice suck for gaming unless you get the best high-precision mouse with a good mouse pad, and that just becomes expensive and you're still using a keyboard and mouse. Might as well spend that money on a controller designed for gaming in the first place.

 

[Renzatic]

No, Apple is. Period.

Don't come marching in here and say Valve is the best, this is a Apple-forum.

We allready have Samsung trolls... we do not need Valve trolls too.

ANNOUNCEMENT: It is a well known fact that no one is allowed to like more than one thing at any one time. If you find yourself beginning to enjoy another product by another company, you must immediate renounce your previous appreciation of Apple, and make a formal request to the moderators to remove your account from this site. Anyone found showing signs of liking two or more things equally will be reported to the moderators. If the situation is deemed severe enough by the moderators, the Macrumors Rapid Response Team will be deployed to extract the offending "two-liker" from his home or place of business, and enrolled within a high intensity reeducation program until they are deemed fit to return to Macrumors society.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

 

[flux73]

Interesting controller. I'll reserve judgment until I can get my hands on one.

 

[ActionableMango]

BTW, a few years ago, Valve was the most-hated Software company for forcing their business model onto the community. Nowadays, Valve is universally beloved. Just goes to show what a short-term memory the Internet has.

It's not short term memory at all. Steam changed. It used to suck. Now it doesn't.

If it went back to the way it was, I'd hate it again.

 

[Renzatic]

It's not short term memory at all. Steam changed. It used to suck. Now it doesn't.

If it went back to the way it was, I'd hate it again.

I think people initially hated it because they didn't like the idea of only having digital copies of their games. Back when it first came out, digital distribution was still a relatively new thing, and no one particularly trusted it.

But thanks to a ton of added features, good support of what they've got, and a whole metric crap ton of sales, people warmed to it over the years.

 

[Michael Goff]

I think people initially hated it because they didn't like the idea of only having digital copies of their games. Back when it first came out, digital distribution was still a relatively new thing, and no one particularly trusted it.

But thanks to a ton of added features, good support of what they've got, and a whole metric crap ton of sales, people warmed to it over the years.

A laughable offline mode probably didn't help them at all.

 

[mappyman]

Hmm Dont think it will be any good for street fighter.

 

[9000]

But the Steam controller is designed to trick a game into thinking it IS a mouse and keyboard; which is the one form of input that every PC game supports. So instead of a little bit of support here and there for select PC games with the current controllers, the Steam controller allows PC gamers to use a gamepad with ANY game in their Steam library.
This is what the finished product is supposed to look like. The one shown in the video is a prototype.

Hope that helps!

It does help. That makes more sense. Still, the button layout doesn't look as good as that of a 360 or NGC controller.

As for the compatibility issues, why not fix them (can't be too difficult) instead of making a controller that pretends to be a keyboard and mouse? Seems like a workaround method. Some games are simply terrible to use with a controller, like strategy games, but those that are good with controllers should have support. Steam could make it easier if they wanted by providing some layer of abstraction with an API.

Also, GameCube controllers do work with Mac and Windows games very well at least with emulators if you have an adaptor, which costs around $20 per 2 ports. There's some kind of plug-n-play USB controller standard in place it seems.

----------

Sounds like someone's being a crab (pun intended).

I don't get the pun.

----------

Steam has done for mac gaming/3d graphics advancement than apple has. Show some god damn respect.

What? How? Steam isn't even a company, by the way.

----------

The issue is that valve isn't using Apple's APIs. I'm not sure what they're using... I thought at one point that it was Qt, but now I'm not so sure. Either way, it's laggy, crashy, and ugly. I wouldn't use it if it wasn't so damn convenient to have your entire game library in one place like that, with autoupdates etc.

It's some kind of modified web browser. Most things in it is loaded from HTML, like all the player profiles and game pages.

 

[Renzatic]

Steam could make it easier if they wanted by providing some layer of abstraction with an API.

That's exactly what they're gonna do. What we're seeing here is Valve's official controller that'll ship with all their Steamboxes, but it isn't the only one they'll build support for. Since they're building SteamOS as yet another Linux distro, using the same underlying libraries and everything, there's nothing stopping you from plugging in an Xbox360 controller and using that instead.

 

[9000]

That's exactly what they're gonna do. What we're seeing here is Valve's official controller that'll ship with all their Steamboxes, but it isn't the only one they'll build support for. Since they're building SteamOS as yet another Linux distro, using the same underlying libraries and everything, there's nothing stopping you from plugging in an Xbox360 controller and using that instead.

But the 360 controller isn't going to work perfectly well with all games that would benefit from a controller.

 

[Renzatic]

But the 360 controller isn't going to work perfectly well with all games that would benefit from a controller.

Sure it would. Just about every PC game made these days with a controller in mind is built around the 360 pad.

Case in point, all the games I played in Windows using my 360 pad use it the exact same way in Linux. Like Trine 2, Mark of the Ninja, Bastion, Fez, and whatnot.

 

[Zellio]

I think people initially hated it because they didn't like the idea of only having digital copies of their games. Back when it first came out, digital distribution was still a relatively new thing, and no one particularly trusted it.

But thanks to a ton of added features, good support of what they've got, and a whole metric crap ton of sales, people warmed to it over the years.

They hated steam early on because it sucked.

 

[Renzatic]

They hated steam early on because it sucked.

Gotta love the deep level of debate and discourse around here.

Actually, I didn't start using Steam until it had already been out a few years. The only game I ever used it for was Half-Life 2, which is funny because I bought it at Wal-Mart, then realized I wanted to play World of Warcraft more. I went in complaining that "it don't work on my playstation none", they gave me my cash back, and picked up WoW at Electronics Boutique.

Then years later, I sign on to Steam because I wanted to buy something, and...what do you know...I figured out I still had Half-Life 2 after all that time.

That was the first of two times I ended up ripping off Wal-Mart.

 

[D.T.]

That was the first of two times I ended up ripping off Wal-Mart.

If I recall correctly, the second time was that major fertilizer scam you pulled.

 

[Renzatic]

If I recall correctly, the second time was that major fertilizer scam you pulled.

How did you...

 

[Zellio]

Gotta love the deep level of debate and discourse around here.

Actually, I didn't start using Steam until it had already been out a few years. The only game I ever used it for was Half-Life 2, which is funny because I bought it at Wal-Mart, then realized I wanted to play World of Warcraft more. I went in complaining that "it don't work on my playstation none", they gave me my cash back, and picked up WoW at Electronics Boutique.

Then years later, I sign on to Steam because I wanted to buy something, and...what do you know...I figured out I still had Half-Life 2 after all that time.

That was the first of two times I ended up ripping off Wal-Mart.

Okay, how about the fact that I used it around 2005-2006? I forgot the account I had, but I only played demos, until I bought Half Life 2 complete. The early versions crashed a lot, had no real community service, and the UI was all simplistic and boring.

Early on all you really had was Valve games, a few third parties, and popcap.