Valve has shown off its recently unveiled Steam Controller in a new demonstration video, ahead of the prototypes shipping to lucky beta testers.
Officially revealed on September 27, the Steam Controller was part of a trio of big news announcements that also contained the SteamOS and Steam Machine game consoles.
This video is the first time the Steam Controller has been demoed to the public, showcasing the benefits of the gamepad for PC gamers.
“Here’s a quick look at some games being played with the prototype version of the Steam Controller – the same version that we’ll be shipping to 300 Steam users later this year,” reads the Valve blog post.
Valve shows off how the Steam Controller works with PC games like Portal 2, Civilisation 5 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and how programmable the gamepad is for different genres of games.
“One of the most important features of the controller is that the two trackpads are fully configurable,” said Jeff Bellinghausen, a Valve engineer working on the Steam Controller. “What we’re showing here is what we call Legacy Mode, which is playing a game that hasn’t been modified at all to support the controller. So this is just standard keyboard and mouse style Portal 2, but the controller is acting like a mouse and keyboard and is mapped to output keyboard events that Portal expects.”
The right track pad acts like an analogue stick, but instead of velocity based movements, it uses a one-to-one mode that used a fixed distance based on the way your thumb moves on it. This makes movement far more precise and mouse-like than your average console gamepad.
However, the left track pad is configured like a traditional D-Pad, or A,W,S,D keys on a PC keyboard and is divided as such.
From what we can see, the Steam Controller looks far more precise for PC gamers making the transition to living room console gaming. Of course, we can only get so much from a video demonstration.
Next, read our pick of the best games of 2013.
