... but is this the year of linux desktop...?
They'd also need to keep costs down like they do with the Deck and that's going to be a real challenge, but if they can get a controller + desktop out for about the price of the Deck but without the handheld performance restrictions, I think they can gain popularity.
All of that being said, I've unfortunately never had the opportunity to try it myself, so I don't really know.
My biggest issue is that the touchpad lack precision that a normal joystick would provide, and you need quite some force to push the directional buttons underneath the DPAD.
It wasn't a complete design failure. I do miss the button on the end of the triggers, that was a smart choice. I find the Deck paddles a lot harder to press than the ones on the Steam controller.
The deck took everything the Steam controller tried to do and just did it better. The trackpads is still there, including the force feedback, but it's no longer used in place of usual controls.
With these lessons learned, I think Valve will be able to design an awesome controller!
There's nothing I want to do on desktop Linux that I can't anymore. That's really kind of insane for me to accept, but it's real. Well done guys, it took like thirty years but you made a good OS.
The caveat is I don't do anything highly specialised like high-end video-editing, which is where I hear the big gaps still are.
[1] my personal YotLD was '99.
Android achieved that many years ago.
And locked in Android's attic, in a padded cell.
I gave up on Linux desktop long time ago.