Steam Controller Hands-on 138
Ars Technica has posted their impressions from a hands-on session with Valve's new Steam Controller. The controller notably departs from standard practice of relying on two thumbsticks for precise movement, instead replacing them with concave touchpads. From the article:
"When used as a kind of virtual trackball, as most games did with the right pad, it was a revelation. When used as a virtual d-pad, as it was on the left pad, it was an exercise in frustration. Let's focus on the right pad first. There's definitely a learning curve to using this side of the pad properly; years of muscle memory had me trying to use it like an analog stick (minus the stick) at first. It only really began to click when I started swiping my thumb over the pad, as I've seen in previous videos (there was no one on hand to really explain the controller to me, so I was left figuring it out on my own, just like a new Steam Machine owner). When I say it "started to click," I mean that literally. The subtle clicking in your hands as you swipe along the pad is an incredible tactile experience, as if there was an actual weighted ball inside the controller that's rolling in the direction you swipe. And like a trackball slowly losing its inertia, the clicking slows its pace after you lift your thumb off the pad, giving important contextual information for the momentum imparted by your swipe."
More write-ups are available about the controller from Gamespot, Gizmodo, and Joystiq.
Re:This thing is DOA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This thing is DOA (Score:4, Insightful)
A very subjective opinion.
With games like Psychonauts, Bastion, Wasteland, Fez, Frozen Synapse, Brütal Legend, Aquaria, FTL, Super Meat Boy, Stacking, Shank, To The Moon, Hotline Miami, and so many other brilliant games, there are a huge selection of quality launch titles for the Steam Box.
I'd easily take the Steam Box and its library over current console launch titles.
Re:This thing is DOA (Score:5, Insightful)
With so many corporations focused purely on next quarter profits, not thinking even six months ahead, I suppose it's normal for people to not understand the decade-long plans of Valve.
First off, they're only competing with the PS4/Xb1 by being a couch+TV focused system. They're a fully open system - you can build your own Steam Machine and slap the OS on it. But you'll have a hard time getting a quality machine for less than $500. That's one prong of their long game - erode the Windows tax, and just as importantly, make sure that if Microsoft suddenly fails or turns hostile to PC gaming, they have a way out. But stop thinking of it as "$500 console" (which is basically normal now), and more as a "$500 gaming PC", which is really damn cheap.
I know what you're about to say - "that's just semantics!". Well, yeah, it is, but it's also the truth. You're not getting a console with fixed hardware being sold below cost so they can make up for it in games or even with later hardware revisions, you're getting an upgradeable, user-accessible system.
Second, their "launch lineup" is arguably bigger than the Xb1's and PS4's combined. I just did a search on Steam for games with Linux and full controller support - got 58 results, from Metro: Last Light to Super Hexagon. Sure, they're almost all indie or older games, but you know what? I had more fun with Brutal Legend than I did with the last Call of Duty, so maybe that's a good thing. And that's ignoring the fact that a lot of these boxes also have Windows preinstalled as dual-boot, to get you the hundreds of games *that* supports (even with the "on Steam with full controller support" requirement, there's 292 games that meet the mark, including aforementioned latest CoD).
Third, game support is aimed at long-term growth, not a sudden burst at launch that fails to hold on. Remember how the PS3 was at launch? Decent set of launch games, I suppose, then nearly nothing for a few years. At times I felt like the Gamecube had better third-party support, although looking now the numbers don't back me up. They're not able (or perhaps just not willing) to bribe companies into developing for their hardware, so they basically have to convince them by showing that it's profitable.
Oh, and every SteamOS game intrinsically has Linux support. Remind me again, before Valve got involved how many developers were releasing Linux ports?
They've got the hardware guys rallying behind them because removing the Windows tax removes one of the bigger disadvantages from PC gaming. They've got the indie guys rallying behind them. You are correct in that the major third-parties have not yet committed to the platform, but I'm not sure your implied analysis that AAA games are necessary for a platform is correct. If this takes off, it will make new AAA developers from the indies. I wouldn't bet on that, but I'd also not bet against Valve's long game.
Re:A gentle push from Steam (Score:5, Insightful)
That and the fact that they announced that you're free to install SteamOS on any hardware.
Sounds a damn sight more open than any other "console" out there.
Tried this today (Score:2, Insightful)
A solid 20 mins at the press event. I'm a big Valve fanboy, but this just didn't work for me. It didn't feel like a good gamepad replacement, nor a good keyboard/mouse replacement. Tries to replace both, masters neither.
Re:A gentle push from Steam (Score:5, Insightful)
So when you say "Sounds a damn sight more open than any other 'console' out there."
I say: I am glad you are optimistic and interpret it the way you want to hear it.
But when a company that specializes in DRM --- and Steam is great, by the way, and I enjoy playing No More Room In Hell as one example --- but they still specialize in DRM and the idea of optimistically assuming the ultimately awesome best out-of-this-world groovy scenario might work for you.
This extreme optimism doesn't work for me. Steam is a DRM-based platform, I cannot imagine any scenario where it resembles "open". Regardless of how it "sounds" (which is something called "marketing" in some corners of the world).
Coexistence (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is a DRM-based platform, I cannot imagine any scenario where it resembles "open".
For one thing, the Steam DRM platform is designed to coexist with DRM-free games on the same machine. I could take a DRM-free game for Linux and install it on an Ubuntu PC that also has the Steam client installed or on a SteamOS PC. Console DRM, on the other hand, is specifically designed to reject anything DRM-free. For another, it's reportedly easier to get an indie game greenlit on Steam than it was on the seventh-generation consoles. Remember the issues that Robert Pelloni had with his RPG Bob's Game?
Steam and the Steambox (Score:3, Insightful)
If Steam were just a service where I could just buy games, I'd be all over it. Unfortunately, what Steam mostly is is DRM. It's obstructionware that insists on being present. I don't like having to wait for it to load, having to wait for it to retry and fail to find a network connection, and having to check "Offline" every single time I run something. I don't like it blowing my mods away, forcing me to do updates, and randomly unsorting and resetting my list of Skyrim mods if I don't save my edits fast enough. Steam DRM kills the Steambox for me, which is very sad because the Steambox is a Windows 8-killing PC in spite of Valve's efforts to try to steer perception away from that.