EDIT IT CAME EARLY AND I LIKE IT
Oh they’re showing estimates now? Let’s check.
:(
Think of it like this,this estimates everyone buying it. It can only get better from this. I got dec. 26
I’m very happy I managed to snag one. For anyone waiting: it’ll be worth it.
I reserved on May 15th, and mine says 2027 ship date. “Some” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that title.
I completely forgot about the reservation and only got it in 4 hours later. Estimated is December 2026.
Sad, mine is in 2027 and I got in on day 2 when they opened pre-orders as I missed initial announcement.
I’m sure it’s a great controller, but for me personally it’s just way too expensive. Also, I’m never gonna use the trackpads outside of a Steam Deck.
I’d consider my current controller (GameSir Supernova) to be the best one I’ve ever used. For the price of one Steam Controller I could get 2.5 of those. It also comes with a very convenient charging station, which you can plug the receiver into, and then it’s a 2-in-1.
I rarely criticize Valve, but their recent pricing is out of this world. I have no idea what their profit margins are on these devices, but I just cannot imagine them being competitive.
As much as I love my og LCD Deck, I’d never buy it at the current price. Same for the controller.
The current Deck pricing is probably out of their hands, memory prices are crazy. It’s not just Valve, the Lenovo legion go handhelds went up by about $400 for the 16GB models and $600-700 for the 32GB models. The Asus ROG/Xbox handhelds haven’t increased in price yet, but I suspect that probably means they either overestimated demand or were able to negotiate a fixed price contract before prices got crazy. Either way they’ll probably shoot up soon as well.
The controller has less reason to be expensive, although it does have several premium features beyond your normal controller. They priced it between something like an standard xbox controller ($65) and an xbox elite controller ($150-200), so in that context it doesn’t seem that bad.
yay got my notification today. Reserved on the 8th. Just leaving this here as some hope to the people that haven’t received anythng yet
Mine shows 2027 estimate :( was hoping to replace my Vader 5 Pro with its pretty abysmal software situation with the Steam Controller soon, but I guess not
Honestly would love one of these controllers but a limiting factor for me is how universal it can be, a friend nabbed one on preorder says you can only really use it on steam with limited support outside of steam. Got one of those gamesir pros instead, same price, no wait, universal usable on pc
Without steam it defaults to doing a combination of keyboard and mouse inputs, meant to let people use a desktop. Idea is you could boot up computer, and then be able to navigate the computer to launch steam/etc.
You do have options for playing games from outside of steam:
- add games as a non-steam game to steam, allows managing inputs/etc.
- any games that use SDL will have native steam controller support (many emulators etc)
- software like Steamless controller (windows) or SISR (windows or linux) allow you to use the controller outside of steam, allowing different levels of input customization.
edit: removed sc-controller because it’s apparently not updated for the new steam controller yet
What else do you want to use it for? For me the coolest feature is the ability to play mouse games on a couch. For other consoles I think either 1st party controller or a good 8bido would defeat steam controller despite it being really awesome
I’m actually baffled who buys all of these controllers? If you’re windows user you have a plethora of options in all price brackets. I wanted to buy steam controller because of Linux compatibility (Reverse engineered Xbox controller driver likes to shit itself from time to time)
Why everyone else just suddenly needs This new controller is just beyond me
If you’re windows user you have a plethora of options in all price brackets. I wanted to buy steam controller because of Linux compatibility (Reverse engineered Xbox controller driver likes to shit itself from time to time)
8bitdo and similar controllers work absolutely fine under Linux. No idea where your Linux compatibility thing comes from.
8bitdo
First time I hear about this company. I have no idea if they’re trust worth, and If they make a solid product that won’t break two months after warranty expires.
What? They’re probably the biggest 3rd party game controller vendor. They moved to hall effect before even the 1st party companies had those in their elite controllers.
Also, regular Xbox also work fine under Linux. The only thing that needs the reverse engineered community driver is that wireless dongle because it can pair multiple controllers. USB and Bluetooth are absolutely fine for pretty much every controller under Linux. The dongle 8bitdo uses is for a single controller, so it acts like a regular controller that was connected with a USB cable.
Maybe they’re known in US, but I never seen them in EU.
USB and Bluetooth are absolutely fine for pretty much every controller under Linux.
USB yes, Bluetooth no - BT has by design considerable input lag, and in case Xbox controller it was even worse.
Reverse engineered xone driver for dongle fails every few kernel updates. I know, I used it for like two years. After few months of not using the game pad you find that it doesn’t work, you need to install new version of the driver IF it’s available, if not you have to downgrade kernel. Fuck this experience. I want things to work out of the box.
Maybe they’re known in US, but I never seen them in EU.
Then you didn’t look properly: https://geizhals.de/8bitdo-ultimate-2c-wireless-controller-pc-android-v177372.html Gulikit is another very famous 3rd party controller brand. I think both source their sensors from the same manufacturer. They often have quite similar controllers.
Reverse engineered xone driver for dongle fails every few kernel updates.
So the dongle is the problem, not the controller. Use a USB cable for best latency. Works fine. Literally every other controller doesn’t have this problem, so specifically needing a Steam Controller because of Linux compatibility is nonsensical.
So if you want one with a dongle that works absolutely fine under Linux and costs only 29 Euro:
