Advertisement

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!