The Steam Controller Is the PC Controller I’ve Been Waiting For
I love my computer. I use it for games, and I have a spare home theater in my living room for everything I will ever need. The only problem I ran into was finding a good way to control my HTPC from the couch. The Steam Controller has finally solved this problem for me – and not just for games.
The Steam Controller ($ 50) is Valve’s effort to make PC gaming more comfortable in the living room. It has two key features that set it apart from other controllers. First, it uses two touchpads as its primary input. Although there is one analog stick on the left side, the device focuses on touch rather than joysticks. Second, and more importantly, the entire controller is completely customizable both in and out of the game.
One failure immediately: your mileage may differ from my experience, if you are used to playing games on the console. While I love how touchpads work for accurate input, console-resistant ones who are used to controllers can find them frustrating and challenging. Everyone has a different playstyle, so don’t take my experience as canonical. Actually, let’s start with this.
Touchpads are awesome (but polarizing)
I never really liked the way joysticks work. Maybe I need to adjust the sensitivity when I play games, or maybe I’m just too strong by nature, but I’ve always been uncomfortable. For me, the touchpads on the Steam Controller are nothing short of a revelation. They work just like a touchpad on your laptop.
For example, in first-person and third-person games, your movement on the screen correlates with your thumb movement rather than stick position. Move your thumb to the right, you go to the right. If you then return to the center of the touchpad on the right side, you will return to the left. You don’t need to rest in the middle to walk to the left. It seems more natural to me. Wherever I point my thumb, the camera is always at hand.
It’s a good option for video games, but it really stands out when I use it to control my desktop. When I try to use Steam in my living room, inevitably there comes a point where you need a mouse or keyboard. Maybe this is when the computer first boots up and you haven’t entered Large Image Mode yet. Maybe it’s when the game opens with a standalone launcher rather than immediately diving into a controller-friendly interface (looking at you, Fallout 4 ). Anytime I have to get up or switch from controller to keyboard and mouse, I interrupt the thread. This is annoying.
The Steam Controller does a great job with this. The right touchpad works like a laptop touchpad, while the left and right triggers work like left and right clicks. You feel like a controller without losing mouse functionality. While it is impossible to do something like this with an analog stick, moving the cursor with a joystick always feels unnatural. This is much better.
Steam keyboard isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the alternative
Typing with a controller is probably the worst thing about consoles. However, the Steam Controller method is one of the best I’ve ever seen (except for a controller with a physical keyboard). If necessary, you can open the onscreen keyboard by splitting it in the middle. Then you “type” with your thumbs on the two touchpads. Swipe your thumb over letters to select them, then tap the panels to enter a letter. As you can see in the screenshot above, the blue circles indicate where your thumbs are on the screen, so you have reliable feedback on what you are typing. You also get autocomplete suggestions as you type.
In my experience, this was much easier than using the D-pad to select letters on the screen or whatever the heck Steam has tried to do before . However, it is not without its drawbacks. First, at this point, you can only use the desktop keyboard when Big Picture Mode is active and minimized, which is a little odd. It’s also a little nerve-wracking. While it is not impossible to type accurately, I found that I made more typos than I expected. This could be due to both my fingers and the controller itself.
It is also not quite ideal for extended typing. I found it unpleasant to have an in-game conversation longer than, for example, one or two messages. However, for typing a quick URL or character name, it is much more intuitive than any other alternatives. The two touchpads make typing quite similar to typing on a phone, which I wouldn’t want to do for a long time either. Regardless, typing with a controller sucks, but for the money, I’d rather something like this than the D-pad.
In short, I highly recommend using the Steam Beta client if you plan on using the Steam Controller with your desktop computer. While the Steam Controller works with the stable release, some features, such as opening the keyboard on the Windows desktop when Big Picture mode is enabled, seem to be exclusive to the beta.
You can customize your controller
The ability to customize each button is a key argument in favor of the Steam Controller. I admit I love this aspect and it’s great for gaming. However, I really want to talk about how you can customize your desktop profile. While this is still disappointingly associated with the large picture mode, it gives you a ton of flexibility.
Almost any button on the Steam Controller can be mapped to any key or key combination you want. As an example, I’ve bound the left arrow button next to the center Steam button to Alt-Tab. Now that I am on my desktop, I can switch between open applications on the fly. This shortcut alone is so useful that I’m not sure why it’s not built in (although unfortunately you can’t Alt-Tab out of large image mode, only return to it).
Naturally, once I found that I could assign keyboard shortcuts to any button, the first thing I did was rip out Autohotkey . Of course, I could create a script (or use one of my existing ones) that is triggered by a specific keyboard shortcut, and then assign that shortcut to the Steam Controller button. For example, I have Ctrl + Q to open Lifehacker.com (because I really hate it when I accidentally log out of Chrome using this damn shortcut). Now Ctrl + Q is assigned to my Y button. Whenever I am on the desktop, I can immediately open our home page with one click.
With this strategy, the Steam Controller really knows no bounds. You can make it launch Cortana and control your desktop with your voice , run macros, or quickly access your most used apps and sites. There are also many Steam Community Desktop Profiles out there, so someone may have already created something that you can use.
Bottom line: it’s not for everyone, but perfect for some
I will not pretend that using HTPCs or playing computer games in the living room is the norm for everyone. Some people are perfectly happy to watch Netflix on their Xbox and use controllers in all of their games. There is nothing wrong. However, if you’re like me and love the power of a PC and hate the way it integrates with the living room, the Steam Controller is a great answer to those problems.
However, not all aspects of the controller are intuitive. The virtual keyboard took some getting used to and still has bumps when using it to control the desktop. However, it offers a ton of flexibility that is difficult to find or use with other controllers. The touchpads themselves make accurate mouse input much easier. I used to use an Xbox 360 controller to play Steam games in the living room, but for now I’ll stick with the Steam controller.