By Nelson Schneider - 03/16/14 at 01:00 PM CT
While things have been fairly quiet since Valve first announced their somewhat weird-looking Steam controller, that doesn’t mean nothing has been happening with the project. This past week, Valve revealed to members of the Steam Universe group that they have been hard at work hand-crafting a small number of revised Steam controller prototypes to show off at the Game Developers Conference next week.
Based on the contents of this PowerPoint presentation (starting on slide 34), it looks like Valve has taken to heart much of the criticism leveled at the original Steam controller prototype by armchair critics such as myself and their beta testing participants. The awkward-looking central touchscreen has been removed, having been made redundant and useless by the versatility of the controller’s two dynamic trackpads. The four face buttons have also been relocated from an unorthodox (and no doubt uncomfortable) split layout around the now-absent centerpiece into a more standard diamond-shaped layout, complete with standard Xbox-style labeling. In addition, since Valve has expressed a strong desire to keep the Steam controller symmetrical in order to cater to Southpaws, instead of adding some flavor of d-pad opposite the face buttons, they are working with a set of arrow buttons that should provide much of the same functionality while maintaining symmetry.
All in all, it looks like Valve is steadily moving toward shipping a fantastic product, shaped by both their own creative vision and by the feedback of their users. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these things!
