Anyone who appreciated the weirdness of the original Steam Controller – and it still has its fans, despite ceasing production in 2019 – might look at this new version and think “Oi, that’s just a Steam Deck with the screen cut out.” An accusation to which Valve, one suspects, might respond by slowly leaning forwards, eyes so wide they resemble the old version’s trackpads, staring the increasingly frightened sceptic in the face and whispering: “Yes.”
Except the new Steam Controller has more to it than merely transplanting the Deck inputs to a homebound gamepad. Having squeezed, caressed, and on a couple of occasions nearly dropped it on the floor of Valve HQ last month, I can tell it’s already boding well not just as a controller for mouse-minded PC games, but as a general purpose pad for everything else.
