Steam Hardware: Launch timing and other FAQs
store.steampowered.com
store.steampowered.com
Oof.... sounds like they are all going to be $$$. That sucks and really steals the thunder from the steam machine. Gaming HW is going to suck for many years.
Not just gaming hardware, everything where the electronics are a predominant part of the unit cost (read: all gadgets) is going to be seeing a big crunch in the next ~2 years (optimistically).
Approximately 100% of RAM manufacturing capacity on Earth has been reallocated to feed the slop machines; anything consumers get is effectively a production cast-off.
Doesn't sound likely
Ughhhhhh. Looks like they're doing the same nonsense as the last controller, and it won't work without Steam running. Such a disappointment; have to hope someone makes an open-source driver.
I assume it will be like Steam Controller 1: Given no Steam and no special driver, the Controller is a Mouse + Keyboard, also referred to as "lizard mode".
I am also anti-DRM, but I don't think this can be solved easily. Consider the Dual Shock 2: Either it's explicitly supported or requires a custom diver to emulate into XInput or DirectInput. Even using XInput directly is cross platform a driver nightmare. Valve has done good work I think with their libSDL based Steam Overlay, becoming a kind of universal Input equalizer, going so far as to patch their games with updated tutorial input prompts based on controller like Dual Shock 2 vs XBox Controllers.
A firmware level solution is not really realistic at this point. Controller Manufacturer 8BitDo went this approach, with many device restart firmware modes per target platform. It's just not a good user experience.
8bitdo did contribute open source code for SDL's support of their controllers.
https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/commit/1998b650452bdf0bee5...
This goal was previously stated as "early 2026". I think they're retconning a bit here.
That said, they're in a very tough situation. Most other manufacturers are either: hedged, have long term supply contracts, past their peak sales, or haven't announced a product yet. Valve are in a particularly awkward spot having announced and (implicitly) extent set expectations about pricing, while likely not having all the contracts finalised to meet that pricing.
Does this mean they're actually bringing a touch/controller friendly browser tab to SteamOS finally? (Yes, i know about the decky browser plugin)
Since there's not enough info on the steam controller release date, does anyone know how well the PS5/PS4/Clone controllers with trackpad work with the steam os ui?
Security seems to be less considered on headsets, but I definitely don't want anything in unlocked SteamOS Game Mode to have access to my Google/Chrome credentials (which are also what logs you into YouTube).
I have a Legion Go, which has a touchpad on the controller. Any questions I can answer for you?
I'm looking at buying https://www.amazon.in/gp/aw/d/B0D3LK3DYX/ for my living room "diy steam machine".
I was waiting for the steam controller because it would let me play point and click games using it's touchpad and also do some light web browsing and even be useful in the desktop mode (like how it works now on my deck).
But with this playstation clone controller will i get the same functionality?
For anything more complicated (or Windows), you'll probably need a remapper like Steam or sc-controller running.
You use touchpads on the Steam Controller or deck to move a mouse cursor and there are good gestures for scrolling. I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gesturefy/ in Firefox to quickly switch tabs and other features without keybinds I struggle to remember or moving the mouse. I've used gestures exactly like this in firefox since 2004.
The keyboard using two trackpads is also pretty good.
What are you expecting to be different? What are you hoping for and why?
The real question IMO is what browser? Is it Chrome? Will DRM content work out of the box? Will high resolution streaming work?
I wonder how they plan to work around HDMI cartel's refusal to provide documentation on terms that are compatible with open drivers. If they reverse engineer that garbage it would be very cool though.
But, the "I don't understand" is strong in this. it doesn't mean "it can't work" but I don't understand how it avoids the problems.
Maybe the size of the computed foveal coverage area is made big enough, to cover the movement? But if you move your eyes suddenly, there's got to be some lag while it computes the missing pixels. So you'd see the same as when Netflix ups the coding rate: crude render becomes clearer. Banded would become smooth transitions.
I don’t have an answer for you, but take some applause from me for spelling this out :)
It’s very difficult for most people to intuitively understand that what they could not figure out after five minutes of thinking might not necessarily be impossible.
As for peripheral vision, any gradation being smooth probably helps, but there might be more tricks to make it look normal. I'm reminded of how jpeg images and some sound codecs only store information that we can actually perceive.
it won't because your eyes literally doesn't have enough sensors in those regions to see it.
Do you know you have a big hole in your vision in each eye where the optic nerve is? It's about half the size of your fist at arm's length, and 35 degrees to the side. Your fovea happens to be roughly the same size. It's the HD part of your retina, and it's where essentially all of your vision happens. It's the only section of the retina that sees color, for instance. The periphery sees motion and that's about it.
Saccades top out at around 700 degrees per second. At 120 frames per second that's only about 6 degrees in either direction. Compared to the FOV, that's tiny. Overfill it!
And then you should notice some movement/rotations. Look around, and find out where that rotation is!
Some folks experience the image pretty much continuously and don't notice the edge blurring. Others see it every time they move their eyes left/right. This is on the same headset.
Part of it is driven by differences in eye geometry, and even color (as this impacts the effectiveness of the camera track of the eyes). I've seen the raw camera buffers for eye track on a couple headsets and they're.. a mess.
Honestly that the feature works at all, for anyone, is still mind boggling to me.
Oh well, at least we can now generate meme videos of cats riding a skateboard while doing the lambada. That has never been done before. The tremendous intellectual progress of humanity is worth a few hundred percent hardware price increase.
(which isn't a thing yet on Linux)
So, you're saying you can still ship on time without including these things and we just add them ourselves? Cool.
So its unlikely a launch like this could be successful and would just result in the new Steam pc/console being dead on arrival..