I was expecting a new controller from Valve today, but I...

I was expecting a new controller from Valve today, but I wasn’t expecting one quite like this! First reaction was that I wasn’t quite sure how you were supposed to use it, but reading the page cleared that up, and I like a lot of things about it. The touchpad is great to support mouse based games (though my first thought would have been a trackball) more buttons than other controllers, the touchscreen is a great idea, it looks cool, looks comfortable. But I do have a few quibbles. The X and Y button placement concerns me. What if you need to hit them while moving? The lack of colors on the ABXY buttons is also problematic. They’ve changed the positions, and until you memorize the new placements, hitting them on short notice (such as during a dreaded QTE) could be problematic… a bit of paint will fix that, to an extent, but the prompts will likely not be color coded to match. While I think the right stick definitely needed replacing to make it truly PC compatible, I am unsure of the need to replace the left stick and I am not sure how well that will work for movement. Will it still allow you to do things like move your thumb a bit and you walk, a bit further and you run? if so, it ought to be fine, but I do worry a bit. Also, while no price was mentioned, it looks expensive to me… I hope to be proven wrong about that.

But, overall, I think it’s much better for PC gaming than a traditional controller. I am a pure PC gamer, I do not own a console, nor do I plan on ever getting one, but my Steam account has hundreds of games. I do like to use controllers sometimes, it helps with my tendonitis, but have always hated how imprecise the left stick is compared to a mouse…

(via Steam Controller)

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62432489783