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Valve's new Steam controller feels familiar, but strange
Valve's original vision for a PC gamepad was an arresting deviation from the norm: touch-sensitive control pads in place of dual analog thumbsticks and a full-on touchscreen in lieu of actual buttons. The company's latest revision -- codenamed "D0g" after the character from Half-Life 2 -- skews a little more traditional, replacing the curious touchscreen with eight regular buttons. Is it a loss worth lamenting? We caught up with Valve at GDC 2014 to find out.
Here's a much clearer look at Valve's new Steam Controller
You see that image above? That's the new Steam Controller, headed to SteamOS. Sound familiar? That's because this is the second iteration of the Steam Controller first unveiled last year. Astute readers might be thinking, "Haven't I seen this somewhere before?" That's also a strong possibility, as we got a first glimpse of it back at Steam Dev Days earlier this year (albeit via shaky cellphone camera). Today, however, Valve's deigned us worthy to see it in high-res glory. Heck, the folks at Valve even juxtaposed the new one (on the left) against the original version of the controller (seen on the right). Sad about that missing touchpad? We are too, but perhaps those fancy new buttons will help make up for it, eh? Head below for a much larger version.
Valve's investing in VR, but has no plans to release its own hardware
Remember that Oculus Rift prototype that ran away with our Best of CES 2014 award? Turns out Valve helped make it a reality. Speaking at Steam Dev Days, Valve's Michael Abrash explained that the two companies collaborated on the Crystal Cove prototype's new tracking features, which combines sensors, markers and an external camera to keep track of the user's head and body position. In fact, the software company seems to be pinning most of its hopes for the space on the VR startup, noting that it currently has no plans to ship a Valve-produced headset. Although Abrash doesn't expect virtual reality technology to become mainstream for another two years, he does say that the Crystal Cove prototype is a big step in the right direction. Even so, there's still a lot of room to grow: headsets still need to shed their tethers, improve optics and solve multiple head and eye tracking issues. There are also content hurdles to overcome. According to Oculus founder Palmer Luckey (also taking the stage at Steam Dev Days), developers should be focusing on creating experiences tailored to VR. "Stop thinking about porting existing games," read one of his slides. We'd have to agree: EVE Valkyrie is one of the most compelling VR experiences you can have, and it's built specifically for the Rift. Despite the issues facing the budding technology, Valve seems confident that it will flourish, and pledges to continue working with Oculus to drive the VR revolution onward. Sounds mighty fine to us. [Image credit: @DaveOshry]
Steam Controller drops touchscreen, adds physical buttons (update: new controller image)
It turns out that Valve's hardware beta was an actual beta: the Steam Controller is dropping its touchscreen and adding some physical buttons before going up for sale via Steam and at retail later this year. It's unclear exactly where the buttons will be, but we're seeing reports that they'll approximate a d-pad and the standard A/B/X/Y configuration. According to attendees tweeting from Valve's Steam Dev Days conference, a "ghosting" mode is offered in replacement (which presumably shows a visualization on-screen of however your buttons are being mapped -- that's our best guess as information comes in). Valve's also got an API to help devs integrate the Steam Controller into their games, which apparently supports up to 16 players at once. We'll have more specific news as we hear more. For a look at the previously planned touchscreen, we've got a mockup in our gallery right here. Update: The controller mockup with buttons and no touchscreen can be seen above. [Image credit: @TheIneQuation]
Here are all of Valve's Steam Machines from CES 2014, in specs
Remember those Steam Machine partners we heard about? Gabe Newell just took the stage at Valve's CES 2014 event and made them official, doling out specs for gaming rigs from Alienware, CyberPower, Gigabyte, iBuyPower, Falcon Northwest, and more. There are thirteen machines in all, varying from $500 to $6000 a piece. Not all of them revealed their full hardware specifications, but skip past the break, and we'll give you a rundown of what we know.
Valve still hasn't ruled out making its own Steam Machine
It looks like Valve's not totally ruling out making its own version of the retail Steam Machines that so many other PC manufacturers are making currently. During Valve's press conference this evening at CES 2014, company head Valve Newell said, "We're gonna make that decision as we go along." when asked whether Valve would make its own retail Steam Machine. "We have plans to build more machines as customers ask," he continued. So far, only 300 lucky beta testers have the Valve-made Steam Machine. Newell said that part of Valve's reason for being at CES was to solicit feedback from press and consumers, so it sounds like a Valve-made box might be more than just a dream for now.
Valve now a card-carrying member of The Linux Foundation, 'one of many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming'
In case Valve's multi-tiered investment in Linux gaming weren't clear enough from SteamOS, the Steam Controller and Steam Machines, the company's also joining the ranks of The Linux Foundation membership. Valve Linux head Mike Sartain calls the news, "one of the many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming"; he sees the move as yet another step for Valve toward its bigger goal of popularizing accessible Linux-based gaming. Sartain details a three-pronged approach: "contribute tools for developers building new experiences on Linux, compel hardware manufacturers to prioritize support for Linux, and ultimately deliver an elegant and open platform for Linux users." Though Valve's already firing on all fronts (the Steam client for Linux, the Steam Machines reference hardware, and the promise of SteamOS and Steam Machines in 2014), Sartain says The Linux Foundation membership will galvanize that commitment even more. Valve is joining companies like Sony, NVIDIA and Twitter in the silver tier, meaning Valve contributes an annual membership fee of anywhere from $5K to $20K.
Weekly Roundup: Nexus 5 review, Peripheral Vision with Ayah Bdeir, Steam Controller hands-on and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Daily Roundup: Steam Controller hands-on, Lumia 929 leak, grim BlackBerry developments and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Two crazy Valve hardware prototypes: a portable Steam device and a 'Frankenstein' motion controller
A small table in a side office at Valve's headquarters is littered with Steam Controller prototypes. Designer Greg Coomer is walking me through the thought process behind Valve's first hardware release, and he begins his story on an unexpected topic: the Nintendo Wii. "We were watching other platforms like the Wii innovate in input, and the PC was stagnant. The mouse and keyboard was basically decades worth of static; lack of innovation there," he said. It's with that in mind that the hardware experiments began. First, with a motion controller. They sourced the guts (at least in part) from a Razer Hydra controller, though the changes Valve's engineers made are substantial. "It's a break apart motion controller where there were gyroscopes or magnetic sensors in either path, to sense orientation and position," Coomer explained. "There were also buttons under all your fingers here. A sort of hi-hat thumbstick. So it was really a Frankenstein." The idea behind this controller -- the first of many prototypes that eventually spawned the Steam Controller -- was to find out what works, what doesn't, and what PC gamers want from a new input method.
Valve's first hardware: hands-on with the Steam Controller
I flick up on the right-side touchpad of the Steam Controller, and Civilization V's cursor floats along with it as though I performed the same action on a trackball or touchscreen. As advertised, subtle audible ticks from the touchpad tell me just how hard I've swiped. A quick thumb tap stops the cursor dead in its tracks, approximating the physical stop to a swirling trackball. There's a momentum to the flick demonstrated in-game, and controlling the on-screen cursor feels natural immediately. The touchpad, however, feels anything but natural. The Steam Controller -- Valve's first consumer hardware, planned for release in 2014 -- feels both alien and right at home, all at once.
Steam now 65 million users strong as Valve makes a push for the living room
Valve's Steam service for PC distribution and sales has over 65 million users playing its over 3,000 games, the company announced this afternoon. That's a 30 percent increase (15 million accounts) over the last 12 months -- not too shabby! -- putting the service's userbase well above that of Microsoft's Xbox Live (which has 48 million, according to MS). Not quite the 110 million that belong to Sony's PlayStation Network, but not too shabby. The new Steam number comes ahead of Valve's planned hardware beta, which intends to test the three main components of the company's big living room push: SteamOS, Steam Controller, and Steam Machines. The first of those components, SteamOS, is a Linux-based navigation solution for gaming PCs in the living room. While in can be installed on any PC (and it's free), it'll come installed on the physical Steam Machines that Valve ships to 300 beta participants (alongside the aforementioned Steam Controller). That said, at 65 million users, you have 0.0005 percent chance of being chosen for the beta. Best of luck with that!
Valve shows off how its Steam Controller is going to work
Selling Steam gamers -- who are used to playing their games with a keyboard and mouse -- on a handheld controller is no easy task. Valve knows this, and since the original announcement of the company's new Steam Controller, there have been plenty of questions as to how precise it actually is. To help calm some of the ruckus, Valve has produced a video showing the controller being used with many popular games. The video does a respectable job of selling the concept of using the controller with previously released titles, and the narrator is quick to note that the games shown have not been modified to work specifically with the new accessory. The Steam Controller appears to work just fine for strategy and simulation titles, but the footage shown of first-person gameplay in Portal 2 and Counterstrike: Global Offensive isn't as quick and fluid as some keyboard purists would probably like. Still, for an accessory still in development, it's a pretty nifty showcase.
Daily Roundup: BlackBerry Z30 review, Steam Controller hands-on, Google's new policy turns you into an ad and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
See the Steam Controller in action right here (video)
You've already seen the prototype Steam Controller in stills, but today we've got a video of Valve's new Steam Controller gamepad in action. The Valve employee in the video, ex-Sixense engineer and current Valve hardware engineer Jeff Bellinghausen, takes viewers on a tour through the studio's own Portal 2 first. He employs the dual touchpads as thumbsticks, which seems a bit cumbersome in this instance: his right thumb can be seen repeatedly scrolling as it runs out of touchpad space. Not exactly an issue in something like Portal 2, but certainly an issue in a more twitch-based game. The second game shown is the normally mouse-and-keyboard-dependent Civilization 5 -- again, workable in this instance as Civ doesn't require twitch-based response. The facsimile of mouse control on the touchpad is clearly workable, though it looks like it'll require some getting used to (just like the devs who used it told us). Up next, Bellinghausen tries out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's training map in an effort to demonstrate precision with the touchpads. Though it certainly works, we'd like to get a better idea of using the controller in a more rigorous match -- few multiplayer first-person shooters allow time for extra mouse movement. The final game shown is indie darling Papers, Please, yet another mouse-driven game that seemingly works well with Valve's controller. The first prototypes for the Steam Controller arrive in 300 lucky households later this year. Head below the break to take a look at what they'll be getting!
Valve hosting first Steam Dev Days game developer conference in January 2014
Following Valve's trio of announcements last month, from SteamOS to Steam Machines and a brand new, bizarre controller, the gaming company revealed that its hosting a Steam development conference next January. The conference, titled "Steam Dev Days," runs for two days in Seattle's Washington State Convention Center, and promises panels, instruction, and hands-on with the aforementioned Steam products. There's also talk of VR discussion, something Valve continues to explore in interesting ways. Unlike the pricey San Francisco-based Game Developers Conference, Steam Dev Days costs just $95 to attend. All events on-site are off the record, though sessions are to be recorded and available after the show. Should you wish to present a panel, Valve's asking for submissions right here -- news on sessions and speakers already confirmed are coming "soon."
Weekly Roundup: Surface Pro 2 hands-on, Xperia Z1 review, Valve's SteamOS efforts and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Valve unveils awkward-looking game controller, to be compatible with all Steam games
This week, Valve gradually revealed a number of interesting new products, starting Monday with the announcement of its own dedicated Steam OS. Wednesday brought news that the company is working on a number of home "Steam Box" consoles for the living room, and today the announcements wrapped up with the reveal of an all-new peripheral its calling the "Steam Controller," which will be compatible with all versions of Steam, including Steam for Mac. The controller is different from anything gamers are likely used to seeing, as it abandons the now-standard analog sticks of most controllers in favor of dual trackpads. How the device performs has yet to be seen -- and a total of 300 beta units will be sent out to help generate feedback -- but Valve insists it offers control accurate enough to act as a stand-in for the more traditional keyboard and mouse combination.
Steam Controller in use: game developers sound off on the beta version's highs and lows, how it feels
We've only known about the Steam Controller for 24 hours, but it turns out a variety of developers already got a chance to put the controller to use ahead of the lucky 300 beta participants later this year. The devs we spoke with didn't use the final format of the controller, but instead used the non-touchscreen beta form seen above: four large buttons stand out in place of the clickable touchscreen panel (planned for the final version of Steam Controller). It's the version that will ship to those aforementioned 300 beta participants later this year, and it's the version that Valve is showing game developers ahead of anyone else. Follow us beyond the break and find out what they had to say.
Daily Roundup: Distro Issue 109, Valve's Steam Controller, CyanogenMod creator Steve Kondik and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
