Valve discusses new Steam Controller and what's happening with the Steam Machine — BBC News

[0:00] people will make a bunch of their own stuff, whether it's cases or little stands. We're [0:05] excited to see what people do with that. This is the Steam Controller by Valve. It's [0:09] coming out in May for PC, Steam Deck and Steam's new gaming PC, the Steam Machine, which isn't out [0:15] yet. It'll cost £85 or $99. So what are you getting for that price? Here's everything you [0:22] need to know from Valve themselves. It's kind of a journey from the first Steam Controller [0:27] to the Steam Deck than to the Steam Controller 2026. Like with the first controller, the goal was [0:33] to show that, hey, in PC, a lot of games are made for mouse and keyboard. And there is a controller [0:39] that could exist that could play those games well if it was designed with that in mind. And that's [0:44] why there's those two big trackpads right in the middle. It has gyro built into it for a different [0:50] way to control the mouse, back buttons. What we learned from that was, yes, it actually does play [0:56] mouse and PC games, sorry, mouse and keyboard games well. But because it was lacking all of the [1:02] typical game pad inputs that people would expect, it didn't play games that were made for controller [1:08] as well. Like there's only one thumbstick, there's no D-pad and those were missed. So going from the [1:13] Steam Controller to the Steam Deck, we wanted to take everything that we learned in the first Steam [1:17] Controller, which is both those two lessons I just mentioned, and turn it into the Steam Deck and [1:22] figure out how do we get all those in a comfortable ergonomic form factor, right? How do we get all of [1:28] those inputs in a spot that your thumb can reach for most people? Because people have all different [1:33] hand sizes. What we've learned in the Steam Deck is like, hey, with all of that there, it works. It [1:37] works great. People really like the Steam Deck. They think the ergonomics are good. We think the [1:42] ergonomics are good. And so really, at that point, it was natural to take another stab at the Steam [1:47] controller with everything we learned from the Steam Deck and do it again. So you'll notice the [1:51] big differences are there's two thumbsticks, there's a D-pad, trackpads are lower and not top [1:57] and center. And that's just based on all that usability work, like where is the best location [2:02] for everything? Yeah, and the landscape of PC gaming has also changed over the last 10 years since the [2:07] original Steam Controller. Back then, there weren't as many PC game developers with thinking about [2:12] controller support. But these days, a lot of games are just shipping day one with controller support. [2:17] And we see year over year, like continual growth of daily sessions of people playing games on Steam [2:23] with a controller, whether it be with Xbox controller, PlayStation controller, or even Steam Deck. So [2:29] kind of the timing is good. The landscape makes sense that we want to have with Steam Deck and with [2:34] the new Steam Controller input surface that can handle all of your inputs equally well, whether the game is [2:41] made for a gamepad or not. Yeah. At the moment, it only works with things that run Steam. It doesn't [2:47] work with consoles, for example. Can you see that changing in the future? At this time, because of [2:53] the way that Steam Controller is made with all of the advanced inputs, Steam really is required to kind of [2:59] drive and run all of those inputs and, you know, translate to Steam, translate it to the game for all of [3:05] that. For the original Steam Controller, there are a lot of community solutions for that kind of stuff. [3:11] We'd imagine that something like that would continue for the new Steam Controller as well. [3:16] But for us right now, we're focused on making this best controller for Steam. [3:21] Where did the idea for the magnetic controller come from? Because that's a really interesting part of it. [3:27] When we were doing early play testing internally, we didn't have any kind of proprietary low latency [3:34] connectivity set up. It was just Bluetooth because that was easy to implement and just turn on its, [3:38] you know, pre-built stuff. With just relying on Bluetooth, it's like people's homes and environments [3:42] are so variable. We ended up having to send a bunch of colleagues home with special dedicated antennas [3:48] because, you know, the way that their station was set up, it was like using Bluetooth and wireless in [3:52] the same antenna. And they had all these interference problems and they were having bad wireless [3:56] experiences. So we knew we needed to provide a custom solution there to make sure everybody had a low [4:01] latency experience that we can make sure is good for everybody. The first Steam Controller did the same [4:07] wireless receiver, but it was like a little nub this big. It went on a little dock on your desk. [4:12] And like, we know not a lot of people use that. They just go to Bluetooth mode because it's so much [4:16] easier. And so they're not getting all the benefits of that low latency connected connection. And so we [4:21] really thought hard about like, how do we make this valuable for people so that they actually want to [4:26] use it and, you know, give it extra functionality just to encourage people to get that experience. [4:35] A little side note, there's also an issue where if you just plug these dongles into the back of the [4:39] computer, they do get, they have interference from other things near them. There's a big chunk of [4:45] metal between you. Yeah. And also just other USB devices that had interference. So we wanted to [4:49] get it away from the PC and it's like, okay, do we have a little cable that dangles out, right? All [4:53] these solutions, it was a lot of time spent thinking like, how do we pull all this together [4:57] into something that provides value to the customer, makes them want to use it. And then they can get [5:02] that experience that we know is much more stable than something like Bluetooth. So that's how it came [5:08] about. I'm a huge fan of the puck. As a designer, I'm a UX guy. So like, it's like one little thing that, [5:13] you know, solves so many problems in a small package. Like it solves the wireless interference [5:17] problem. It solves like the quick charging thing. Like it's so much nicer to put it on the puck than [5:21] to like find the USB cord and shove it into the slot. What's your favorite part of the controller? [5:27] For me, it's the puck. I like the puck. I like to hear that because I spent so much time playing [5:31] around with magnets with that puck. Oh my God. The puck is, the puck has a special place in my heart [5:37] for sure. One of the other features I spent a good amount of time on was the grip sense. You know, [5:42] that's a new feature for this controller relative to the Steam Deck. And it is something that, you [5:47] know, we're trying to provide this growing community of gyro gamers with an alternative [5:52] way to enable and disable gyro. It's just kind of, I love the story behind it. I love that we put it [6:00] in, you know, we're trying to help grow another part of the gaming community. To me, it's just nice. [6:06] Yeah, I think. How easy is it going to be to repair? Can you swap parts in and out? [6:12] So we plan on selling replacement parts. Well, we're not selling replacement parts. We're working [6:16] with iFixit to make sure they're available. So if somebody needs to replace something, [6:22] they can go to iFixit and get it there. We purposefully designed this controller to be easy [6:27] to open and to get into in case you need to do something like that. It's your device. [6:32] We believe in that. There's no snaps in it. So when you unscrew the back screws, [6:37] you can just take the back case off. You don't have to figure out where to put your little spudger [6:40] to get it out. And then, you know, we put some considerations into the battery so that it's [6:45] easy to take in and out as well. You don't have to deal with any wires or adhesives. It just kind [6:49] of snaps into place. We did think through this whole design process to support the right to repair [6:56] your devices. It's also serving the modding and customization community. We know that there's [7:02] people who are already thinking about like, oh, I'm going to put neon buttons in here or swap my [7:07] thumbsticks out or like 3D print different shell. Like there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff. [7:11] We can't wait to see what people do with it. And actually to that end, we are going to be soon, [7:16] probably very soon, we're going to be releasing the CAD files, external topology, just like we did for [7:20] Steam Deck so that people will make a bunch of their own stuff, whether it's cases or little stands. [7:28] Like the puck is designed in such a way that it'd be pretty fun and simple to like make a little stand [7:33] that it sits in and then your controller could sit on there if that's what you prefer. So we're excited [7:38] to see what people do with that. What about the price? You know, how do you see the controller [7:42] existing alongside others in the market at the moment? Our perception of that is it really depends [7:48] on what you value in a controller and not to say that anybody's preferences are wrong or right. [7:54] And in the case of this controller, you know, the price comes from the advanced inputs that we put [8:00] in and our goal was to provide as many different ways to play your games as possible in a competitive [8:08] price point for that feature set. And if something like trackpads isn't something that interests you, [8:14] you know, you might not see the value in the price. And there's plenty of great controller [8:18] out there that are straight up game pads without advanced inputs. And, you know, [8:23] that maybe that's the one for you. But in this case, like we think we provide a lot of value for [8:28] the price point that this controller lands at. Yeah, we're really happy with it with not only [8:33] advanced inputs, but also the puck and the wireless charging solution, we think adds a lot of value to [8:37] the just overall experience. And I've got to ask, do we have any more news about the Steam Machine? [8:44] We are, we're still very excited about Steam Machine. We're still working hard on it. We don't really [8:48] have, unfortunately, we don't have any new news to say, other than we're still, you know, struggling [8:55] with the same thing that the entire industry is struggling with, with RAM, and memory storages and [9:01] price hikes. So it's, it is a thing that we're still working on. And we hope to share more news on that [9:07] soon.