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Team Meat offers hands-on impressions of Valve's Steam controller
Team Meat's Tommy Refenes wrapped his mitts around a 3D-printed prototype version of Valve's recently announced Steam controller, and offers up an insightful set of impressions regarding the precision and performance of its unique dual-trackpad setup. Refenes first tested out Valve's controller with his studio's hyper-difficult platformer Super Meat Boy. "The configuration they had set up was simple enough," he explains. "The left circle pad acted as the directional buttons, the right acted as a big giant jump button. The big problem with touch pads / touch screens is you never know when you are actually over a button or pressing it. Valve has tried to rectify this by having some adjustable haptic feedback fire when you press one of the circle pads. Throughout my play session the haptic feedback helped with the problem, but wasn't enough to solve it." Despite reporting issues with the prototype controller, Refenes notes that he was still able to pull off some of the game's more demanding techniques. "The button configuration worked fine for SMB," he writes. "I was able to get to the Salt factory no problem. I was able to sequence break C.H.A.D. by getting the keys before he could do his attacks. I was even able to do the bandaid the super fast way in the second level of the hospital shown here."
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.
Recap: Valve's trio of Steam Box announcements
Valve took its time delivering three announcements this week, each related to the long-rumored Steam Box. Since March 2012, Valve has seesawed on the existence of a Steam-based piece of hardware, but one thing has remained constant: If the Steam Box existed, it would run on Linux. Here we present a rundown of the week's major news, and some thoughts on Valve's living room strategy. On Monday, Valve unveiled SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system designed to stream games, music, TV and movies from a PC and to a living room screen, with native Linux games. On Wednesday, Steam Box was officially announced as Steam Machines, a series of different boxes for varying player needs, all running SteamOS. On Friday, Valve revealed its Steam Controller, a gamepad with trackpads in the place of analog sticks, attempting to bring keyboard-and-mouse gaming to the couch Valve is sending out 300 Steam Machines and controllers (sans a few features) to Steam users in a beta program.
Steam Machines beta program includes controller, sans touchscreen
The 300 individuals selected for Valve's Steam Machines hardware beta program will receive one of Valve's fancy new controllers as well. Along with the controller announcement today, Valve specified how the beta program controller will differ from the final version. The controller will not include the clickable touchscreen in the center, which will be replaced with four buttons. Additionally, the beta program controller will require a USB cable instead of being wireless. It's a small sacrifice the chosen 300 will have to make, but at least they'll have their hands on the first Valve-created Steam Boxes. We're still calling them that, right?
