Amid several rather significant announcements this week, Valve has just taken the wraps off an intriguing new game controller, which, in a break from market trends, will not feature any joysticks whatsoever. The strange looking peripheral includes in-built trackpads in the kinds of positions you’d normally expect to see sticky-outy bits, and with the buttons also having been placed in peculiar areas, this is certainly no ordinary, run-of-the-mill controller.
With its general chunky form factor combined with plenty of curvaceous smoothness, it’s hard to tell whether this invention is a blast from the past or a futuristic take on the modern-day control pad, but one thing is for sure – it’s unlike anything we’ve ever clapped our eyes upon.
Valve has been particularly busy this past week or so, dishing out a plethora of exciting new announcements. With a new “SteamOS” operating system confirmed as in the works and Valve also working with a number of hardware manufacturers to ensure the “Steam Box” dream sees the light of day, an official controller would seem the natural next step, and while the announcement itself is not of particular surprise, what the company has come up with could be potentially game-changing.
With trackpads offering better accuracy over what’s currently available in the world of controllers, this new offering actually makes a great deal of sense, and in essence, the new controller borrows much of its ideas from the fact that Steam gamers use traditional PCs (meaning, keyboards and mice) to enjoy the service to a great extent.
The new Steam controller is like the union of the trackpad, mouse and controller all in one, and as a fairly frequent gamer myself, I’d be fascinated to see what it is like to hold, and more importantly, use.
All of the buttons have been dotted in unfamiliar locations, and while this may well be to the comfort of the gamer – again, we’d have to test it out before passing judgment – there’s no getting away from the fact that whether one is accustomed to Xbox, PlayStation, iOS, Android or PC gaming, the new Steam controller will take quite a bit of getting used to.
Does this kind of controller appeal to you? Or are you better off with the traditional way of controlling games?
(via: Gizmodo)
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