$100 for a controller that will only work through Steam is way too much for me, but I can see how it would be worth it for anyone who exclusively plays games through Steam and wants to play games designed for a mouse on a controller.
It’ll work outside Steam using whatever controls you have set up for its desktop profile, which can be the stock Xbox layout, and I plan to play a few games that way, but yes, the controller does require Steam Input to shine.
You still have to have Steam installed and running for the controller to function. You cannot plug it into a fresh installed OS and have it works out of the box, unlike even the cheapest of Chinesium knock off controllers.
Ah, I guess people are working off different definitions of “running outside Steam.” After looking into it, the lack of DirectInput support is indeed not great. It doesn’t affect my use cases, and the first Steam Controller got open source drivers pretty early, so I doubt it’ll actually be a blocker soon after release, but I’ll refrain from commenting on it until more happens.
Oh, does it? My understanding was that if you wanted to play, say, games through Gamepass on it, it wouldn’t work since you can’t run those through Steam. I’d be glad for everyone if it does work, though!
I think you could run those through steam, by adding them as a non steam game. Then the full steam input feature set is available
Not quite what you were saying though, I definitely want to see confirmation that this bad-boy will work like a normal controller when plugged into a system that doesn’t have or support steam
You don’t have to add them as non-Steam games. You just have to make sure your desktop profile is set up to match how you want those games to be played. You can save templates and swap them out for a bit easier flexibility.
I have my original Steam Controller set up to swap between a mouse and keyboard mode and an Xbox layout and that works for the majority of things I want to do outside of Steam with it, no fiddling with the “add a non-Steam game” stuff.
If you don’t need trackpads or touch sensitive sticks, there are better options out there. If you do need those things and want input parity with Steam Deck, it’s going to be a great experience.
There will also certainly be community developed drivers in a few months so you can use it outside of Steam.
$100 for a controller that will only work through Steam is way too much for me, but I can see how it would be worth it for anyone who exclusively plays games through Steam and wants to play games designed for a mouse on a controller.
It’ll work outside Steam using whatever controls you have set up for its desktop profile, which can be the stock Xbox layout, and I plan to play a few games that way, but yes, the controller does require Steam Input to shine.
You still have to have Steam installed and running for the controller to function. You cannot plug it into a fresh installed OS and have it works out of the box, unlike even the cheapest of Chinesium knock off controllers.
Ah, I guess people are working off different definitions of “running outside Steam.” After looking into it, the lack of DirectInput support is indeed not great. It doesn’t affect my use cases, and the first Steam Controller got open source drivers pretty early, so I doubt it’ll actually be a blocker soon after release, but I’ll refrain from commenting on it until more happens.
It’s still pretty shitty support from a $100 hw device.
Oh, does it? My understanding was that if you wanted to play, say, games through Gamepass on it, it wouldn’t work since you can’t run those through Steam. I’d be glad for everyone if it does work, though!
I think you could run those through steam, by adding them as a non steam game. Then the full steam input feature set is available
Not quite what you were saying though, I definitely want to see confirmation that this bad-boy will work like a normal controller when plugged into a system that doesn’t have or support steam
You don’t have to add them as non-Steam games. You just have to make sure your desktop profile is set up to match how you want those games to be played. You can save templates and swap them out for a bit easier flexibility.
I have my original Steam Controller set up to swap between a mouse and keyboard mode and an Xbox layout and that works for the majority of things I want to do outside of Steam with it, no fiddling with the “add a non-Steam game” stuff.
If you don’t need trackpads or touch sensitive sticks, there are better options out there. If you do need those things and want input parity with Steam Deck, it’s going to be a great experience.
There will also certainly be community developed drivers in a few months so you can use it outside of Steam.
“If you don’t need trackpads or touch sensitive sticks, there are better options out there.”
Not challenging this, more a market research, what would be those alternatives?
I play most my games via Steam Linux PC. What would be a better plug and play option to the new Steam Controller?
Very likely. Kind of odd that they don’t come with this functionality by default, since even PS5 controllers worked with PC at launch.
I love Steam hardware, but yes, it’s close to unacceptable that it doesn’t default to like xinput or whatever.