After reports that Valve had received shipments of the accessory, a Steam Controller review has appeared. Deleted ahead of a likely release date update, a YouTuber praised its responsive dual trackpads. Even so, the price may make it more difficult to discount the Steam Machine.
Functionally, you can do the same Steam Input customization on a $50 8bitdo that you can on this $100 controller.
Just no trackpads.
Is there any 8bitdo controller with 4 additional back buttons, too? Those are clutch for dual stick games; I’m almost always remapping then to the face buttons so I never need to stop moving or looking to do an action.
But yeah; the touchpads are critical. So many games become playable with touchpads. Nested radial menus allow for effectively infinitely many controls, which allows for most simulation games. Many Path of Exile builds are unplayable without back buttons and trackpad radial menus, due to input requirements.
tbh, I often play games on my Deck instead of my gaming PC for the controller. It’s really that good. (Although nothing beats kB+mouse for FPSs.)
My Ultimate 2 Wireless has 4 extra buttons.
Two of them are up by the triggers, though. And in Bazzite, you need to be connected via Bluetooth to use them (they’re not available with the RF dongle).
Notably, Linux support sucks with those. I have one, and you can’t do any of this on Linux through their software. There are ways to do it still though, as you can do with any controller really.
FWIW… Bazzite has full Steam Input support for mine… It even has a picture of my specific controller.
Steam Input works fine. I’m specifically talking about their custom software for the controller, which is also used to update firmware.
Linux hardware support is excellent given that 8bitdo is the usual recommended brand. The software part is the one lacking, but you can easily configure it via steam. I have one on Linux, I game without issues.