Magnetic hall-effect thumbsticks
SEE NINTENDO?! IT'S NOT THAT HARD!!
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Steam Hardware
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TMR, not Hall Effect
Even better
I really liked my hall effect keyboard until a few keys decided to start triggering by themselves making the keyboard unusable
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As a big fan of the Steam Deck something I want to emphasize here is that even if you didn't want both the joysticks and the touchpads on the Steam Controller and wish they had picked one or the other, this kind of setup means the controller has essentially the same layout as the Steam Deck which is HUGE for ease of finding custom control schemes already uploaded by the community for complex games.
I prefer joysticks+gyro over touchpads for aiming and so for me the touchpads might seem superfluous, but in reality I heavily use them for virtual menus in all of my control schemes I make for complex games with lots of controls and inputs. The nice thing is that even though I am in the minority of people in that I prefer joysticks + gyro over touchpad for aiming, because the Steam Deck and Steam Controller both have two touchpads and two joysticks, somebody who is touchpad centric can use a control scheme I make pretty much right out of the box just by flip flopping the touchpad and joystick bindings so the virtual menus live on the joysticks instead.
I think this will be one of the subtle things people look back on and credit the Steam Deck and now new Steam Controller for having, it might seem silly and extraneous to have both touchpads and joysticks but it opens up a very wide range of capability and also makes it easier for touchpad and joystck focused players to share custom keybinding schemes with each other.
I thought I'd use the touch pads more but gyro is the first thing i set up in most games.
This is wild to me. Holding my arms perfectly still is practically impossible for me. The idea of a game using my pose and unconscious arm movements as input is positively gameplay-wrecking.
I've been replaying Fallout 3 on Steam Deck, and I only have Gyro enabled when I hold down L2 for aiming. It's pretty awesome because it's so much easier to fine tune aim by pivoting the whole steam deck than it is to use a stick. Like I can get headshots with a 10 millimeter pistol at close-medium range pretty easily. I could never do that with a stick.
I have mine set so if I want it to stay still, I lift my thumb off the movement joystick, turning off the gyro control. If I still need to move, I nudge from the side where the sensor isn't
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Same, I always have to disable it or greatly dial it back, for example in fallout nv I leave it on with low sensitivity while I'm holding the trigger to ads, so I can have the fun aiming experience when I want to, what I really can't stand is "thumb on joystick activates gyro" MF I leave my thumb on the thimbstick when I want to use it, why would I want to trigger gyro?
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I use them both together, touchpds for quick movements and gyro for precision.
Yeah, this is something that I've been wanting for a while now too. I flip flop between my steam deck and a steam-machine-like desktop pc with an original steam controller for a while now, and not having my control mappings translate from one to another has been annoying (but in an understandable way). This is gonna be sweeeeeet.
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Hold up, Steam Frame? New Valve VR hardware??
Whole gaming set, in fact. Steam Machnes are finally coming! Checking it, seems that it is going to be a powerhouse that will blow up console market.
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That looks uncomfortable to hold ngl.
Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor.
I'm more excited about this tbh. It'll be quite something if Valve ends up solving the firmware problems of Linux on snapdragon powered phones.
It's funny, I was thinking the opposite. Lol. The design reminds me of the Dreamcast controller. I remember the first time I held a Dreamcast controller and how insanely comfortable it felt compared to NES, SNES, Genesis, N64 and Playstation. Granted, modern PlayStation and XBox controllers are also much more comfortable than all of those too, so the Dreamcast one might be uncomfortable by modern standards, but I don't know since I haven't held one in 25 years.
I'm hoping this new Steam Controller is as comfortable as I remember the Dreamcast controller being.
I'm not worried. Valve absolutely nailed the Deck ergonomics. They knew what they had to do here.
Yeah, people had said the same thing about the Steam Deck's face layout, but everyone who has actually used one loves the ergonomics.
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Steam Frame is their new VR headset (not an Index successor, more a Quest competitor).
Steam Machine is their pc.
Yeah, but they said the frame is a complete pc as well
I'm quoting their post
Steam Frame is their new VR headset
And Valve literally say on the Steam Frame website that it has a desktop mode running Plasma, just running on an ARM processor instead of x86, and can be used as stand alone PC.
Not sure I wanna blow battery charge on editing spreadsheets in LibreOffice in VR but it'll be possible.
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I'm so thrilled for a new steam controller. I was a huge fan of the original, I just wish it were built Better. I hope the new one is built well, I'm planning to purchase one as I think it will be a good controller for my flight sims
Touchpads on the Deck are really great for on screen menus for things like ability bars and whatnot.
As someone who was an absolutely massive fan of the original Steam Controller (in fact I still have two of them) I absolutely love these. Yes I know they're clearly a different design but like last time they seem absolutely perfect for my larger hands. The touchpads seem to be less of a primary focus but honestly im just happy that they included them at all especially two of them. Also USB C plus rechargeable battery and four back buttons instead of two, this is absolutely everything I could have hoped for and then some.
I really hope that with the release of this sc-controller either starts being maintained or somebody makes a fork of it that is (standalone original steam controller/steam deck/steaminput driver)
But this isn't the first Steam Controller, is it? The first one (and also the first Steam Machine) was released on 2015.
Thank you for making the analog stick aligned like sensible human hands are. Fucking can’t stand the offset sticks on the Xbox.
Thank you for making the analog stick aligned like sensible human hands are. Fucking can’t stand the offset sticks on the Xbox.
I understand the frustration, but personally I’ve always preferred the Xbox/Nintendo stick layout over the PlayStation one myself. For many games, my thumbs are primarily on left thumb stick and face buttons. Obviously anything with camera controls is different, but the offset has never bothered me as much as extending both thumbs down to the sticks like on PlayStation, which sit where they are as a relic of the DualShock introducing analog sticks to an existing controller. (Though I’ll admit the PlayStation setup doesn’t bother me that much, it’s just slightly less comfortable in my opinion.)
The Steam Deck works fine for me because both sticks are higher up, like where the left stick on Xbox/Nintendo falls, rather than below the D-Pad and face buttons like on PlayStation. With this one being somewhere in between, I think I’ll like it just fine. I’m excited to get my hands on one to find out.
My issue on PlayStation controllers is my thumbs hit each other If both sticks are inward, for example moving right while turning left.
I don't have large hands so I don't understand how it's not a more widespread reported issue. Xbox style controllers completely solves this and things like my deck of course its on opposite sides of the screen
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So fucking hyped for this thing. Hope the price is good.
AHHHHHHHH I love my steam controller. I love this upgrade to the Steam Link and the Steam Controller. I am definitely going to try and get this and the Steam Machine. I hope the pricing is doable.
The real question is "does it have a way to wake a steamdeck up from sleep"
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Sony added a screen to their controller to create a handheld, whereas Valve removed the screen from their handheld to create a controller.
I actually love the touchpads, but it weird that I'm thinking about this more in the context of a media center PC than actually playing games? I definitely wouldn't use this for all games unless the form factor was really good.
Because, trying to operate Desktop Mode docked on Steam Deck with a controller is...painful, and this controller would be perfect for jumping into a web browser for streaming sites that don't have Kodi add-ons (Kanopy and Patreon are two that come to mind).
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It really looks like that render, amazing.
Question, who uses the left trackpad and what for? Got my Steamdeck for a year and I don't recall ever using the left one. Just for left-handed players?
I use it as a scroll wheel on my Steam Deck often. Scroll with the left, point with the right.
You can set it as a radial menu for various inputs. Quick save, quick load, map, inventory, decapitation finisher, etc.
I often go through the effort of mapping menus, macros, etc yo the left trackpad. It's especially good for PC games with lots of binds.
To scroll in menus or desktop, sometimes virtual menus for games requiring more buttons
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Wooo. Was worried when the icon didn't have "gamepad + touchpads" but the "ai generated render for legal purposes" did.
Time will tell on the ergonomics. But Valve know their shit and the Steam Deck is genuinely pleasant to use so I assume the size and angle should mean the d-pad and face buttons are still fully usable. Rather than the mess of a switch controller where only the tiniest of hands can use them without cramping.
Currently leaning "three steam controllers, maybe a steam frame when we know more" since I already have an HTPC under my TV.
I hope the d-pad is better than the steamdeck one, other than that I'm looking forward to it.
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Does the computer have to be powered on in order for the puck to charge the controller?
Some computers have special USB ports that stay powered even when the computer itself is off. Guess you'll have to see if yours has one or if it's an option you can turn on in the BIOS or something.
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