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*"You use a solid mousemat, place that on the couch beside you. The keyboard goes in your lap. Kick your feet up and game away. It works great."

I've played console games with three other people scrunched up on a love seat; lying on the couch; sitting crosslegged on the floor; and sprawled out in a beanbag chair. Sometimes I get tired of having my hands in my lap, so I stretch them out behind my head. If I want to relocate, I can keep playing as I walk across the room, or pause and carry the controller in one hand and my drink in the other.

That's the sort of flexibility I want in a "couch controller," not just sitting still on the couch by myself.

They explicitly aren't trying to replace the mouse and keyboard. they're just trying to make an option available for people who want a controller. if you like a mouse and keyboard, good for you, keep using it. from the product page FAQ:

"I’m a happy Steam customer happily using my happy mouse and keyboard. I don’t want a controller? You can’t make a sentence into a question by just putting a question-mark at the end. But we’re happy you’re happy, and by all means keep using whatever input method makes sense for you. Rest assured, we won’t abandon you. We love mice and keyboards, too."

Again, why not find a solution which incorporates mouse+kb instead of avoiding it? Would console-ers really be too put off by an elegant solution?

And the problem here is not negligible. CoD series games will be miserable to play with a gamepad versus mouse+kb'ers, and those games would likely be quite popular on SteamBox.

"I don't understand the problem with traditional mouse+kb for couch gaming"

"why not find a solution which incorporates mouse+kb instead of avoiding it?"

It sounds like they feel the same way to do. Mouse + Keyboard is already viable across a very wide spectrum of games. They don't need "a solution which incorporates mouse+kb", because that already is a solution (as you note, there's no real problem there).

However, for those that want a controller experience, there's not a viable solution. Controllers work across a pretty narrow spectrum of games. That is the problem that they're trying to address.

Because at some point, Valve is about making money, and people don't buy consoles and attach them to their tv with mouse and keyboard en masse. If they did, this wouldn't exist.

If you want/need to sell something in the millions, it kind of needs to be least common denominator. Gamers understand controllers as the basic interface for tv gaming, so they will buy them.

Gamers don't buy keyboards to put on their TV's so Valve is being smart by not forcing a square peg in a round hole. They want the Steam Machines to sell. A mouse and keyboard won't sell.

I can think of two good reasons:

1. cultural expecations. consoles have controller gizmos. people expect it. its a different experience than just running an HDMI cable from your PC to a TV and calling it a day. Its a console. It lives next to your TV all the time. Its supposed to have a controller, because Nintendo's NES had one back in 1985. Cultural expectations and traditions are a powerful force.

2. there are many games that are actually superior to play with a controller than with a mouse and keyboard. Platformer games come to mind. Thats a major genre of consoles and always has been, and alot of indie game companies are exploring the genre again on the steam platform. At the moment I have to use an XBox controller plugged in to my PC to play. If Valve offered their own controller I'd gladly use it instead (assuming its good).

SteamOS should support a keyboard and mouse just fine if that's your bag. They aren't avoiding it.

There are certain games that work better with controllers—the best example I can think of is Mirror's Edge. I would be upset if I couldn't use a controller, because sometimes you need joysticks.

Is that even a good example? Mirror's Edge without the speed and precision of the mouse sounds awful for speed runs, and nothing is lost with the lack of an analog stick for movement (since you're always running).

If you haven't tried before, I highly recommend doing time trials with KB+M. It's a completely different game.

I don't doubt that this controller design likely won't cut it for precision FPS play. On the flipside, however, having a giant keyboard, plus a mousemat taking up space (and to work well, a mouse needs a significant amount of space) and flopping around when people sit up and down on the couch may work for hardcore gamers, but it's likely a non-starter for anyone else. Even if you integrated the mouse so it could be on your lap, it would still be a large ugly thing that's likely to fall down and is hard to use in many of the relaxed positions people are used to gaming in.

Fair enough.

I suppose my "complaint" is that they could do a better job of bridging the gap, but perhaps I am wrong. You do make a good point that the mouse+kb may be too cumbersome for some (most?) consoler switchers.

I do wish that I could see what sort of solution Valve could come up with if forced to keep the primary mouse+kb, though. Some sort of streamlined solution which you partly imagine in your post.

A few friends and I once had imagined a keyboard with an attached mousepad and a mouse that was magnetically (or otherwise) attached to the pad, that prevented from falling off, so that you could rest it on your lap while sitting on the couch.

I always wondered if something like that would be possible.. So you'd have all your precision mouse movement without the akward balancing of loose things while sitting on the couch, or getting up and sitting down.

This was the planned input peripheral for the ill-fated "Phantom" gaming console.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/12/phantom-keyboar/

Aaaand looks like the keyboard actually made it to market, there's even one on ebay. I had no idea.

diamagnetic levitation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNRDvDIqD1M

hoverfield: http://www.correlatedmagnetics.com/products/hoverfield-non-c...

"No one has ever been able to match the precision and control of mouse+kb"

Someone did some tests a while back with a gamepad-trackball (trackball replacing the right thumbstick). They found that pro PC FPS gamers did just as well with it as with mouse+keyboard, after a short adjustment period.

Here's some quotes from the most recent attempt (out of three that I know of) to crowdfund one of those (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/485185897/revolve-goes-w...):

"...I attained a level of accuracy I had never experienced without a mouse and keyboard combination." - Gerry Block, IGN

"You will spend less time fighting your controls and more time fighting bad guys." - Grant Collier, Co-Founder of Infinity Ward and Co-Creator of Call of Duty

Of course it failed anyway, because gamers all went "LOOKS DUMB LOL" and refused to read further. I was really hoping that Valve's controller would be a trackballpad; if it actually made it to market, I'm confident that ongoing positive reviews would lead to popular adoption.

When you make bold statements you generally have to back it up with some evidence. I find it really hard to believe that anyone has the level off accuracy and speed that you get from a good keyboard/mouse combo.

It is a reason that console games come with built in auto aim on all FPS shooters...

I'm looking for the original study I saw. I haven't found it yet, but here's one that found that trackballs were superior to thumbsticks, even for users familiar with gamepads and not trackballs (hardly a revelation, certainly, but you'd be surprised how many people contest it): http://www.yorku.ca/mack/FuturePlay1.html

But come now, my original statement was hardly all that bold. Obviously the reason that gamepad aiming sucks is just that thumbstick aiming sucks. Replace the thumbstick, solve the problem. (And as a bonus, get analog movement as well as analog aiming--the traditional WASD doesn't allow for speed gradations.) I used to game exclusively with a trackball and never had any troubles. The only reason I stopped is that nobody makes trackballs for left-handers anymore that are any damn good. And if you don't believe me, I just gave you a couple of quotes from gaming professionals.

There is a large difference between CoD and CS. That's what you would have to convince me with... that or SC.

I'm pretty sure CoD and CS both involve aiming a crosshairs. That's the only thing that's really relevant to this discussion.

As for Starcraft, you're right, it wouldn't work; not because of the pointing device, but because a gamepad doesn't have enough buttons to manage all the hotkeys. In my original post, I called out FPSes specifically for that reason.

But most console players dont want to use their KB + mouse in the living room, it just doesnt feel right. I know i wouldnt, and i love playing PC games with keyboard and mouse..but if im playing a serious FPS that needs decent KB+ mouse controls i do that on my desk, on the couch i would just be crippled. Anyway this isnt really their market, they want to make PC games playable in the living room for the masses, which would be a huge achievement if this works.

You can have a laid back, more clutter-free experience with a controller in front of a TV - and the TV experience is meant to be laid back, anyway.

I mostly agree with you but to play the devil's advocate... if it is a game I love, I am usually at the edge of my seat (probably a bad idea ergonomically)

Are you suggesting that most hardcore console gamers use a keyboard and mouse? I don't think that's true...

Edit: Rereading your comment, I guess you might mean PC gamers who are sitting on their couches. I don't think that's the market this is after; it's trying to get console gamers onto Steam by providing them a cool new product that will work well with the games they have. This makes that a much smaller shift for those gamers than the keyboard and mouse. Will they still get owned by more traditional PC gamers (since they're now competing directly), as you suggest? I guess that's possible, but that's just saying "console gaming needs to stay separate", not "they should use a keyboard and mouse for console games", which just isn't on the table any more than PC gamers are going to switch to a handheld controller.

Any game with a PC version that is vetted as a competitive esport will find its pc version, with superior and portable control interfaces, to be the choice for competition.

See: CoD, Battlefield, Quake, etc. All prefer exact aiming with a mouse over fudging analog input sticks with aim assist.

By your wording, no, console gamers don't use keyboards / mice, because the games they play on consoles are not compatible with them, and are not designed to use them. Very few genres (fighting, brawlers) sometimes prefer controllers to keyboards, and when they do it is usually a personal choice, or the market has better alternatives to both (ie, fight sticks).

The major difference between a mouse and a controller stick is the type of input.

Mouse is a pointing input - for a movement of 1 unit, your view changes by 1 unit. If you stop moving the mouse, your view stops moving.

Controller stick is a velocity input - for a movement of 1 unit, your view starts moving at a speed of 1 unit. If you bring the stick back to center, your view stops moving.

It could be that the Steam controller trackpad is precise enough to be a pointing input sensor, which could enable precise aiming. But it's too early to tell before the first reviews are out.

There's no reason you can't use a mouse a velocity input and a stick as a position input; either one is returning a value in a two-dimensional space -- treating that value as "position" or "velocity" is a matter of what the receiving software does with the input, not the input itself.

Joystick calibration utilities, for instance, tend to take stick position as a position input, and ISTR a number of PC sims that preferred joystick input but could use a mouse like a non-auto-centering joystick.

That is hardly relevant, using a stick as position input would give you, what, five units of movement on either axis?

> That is hardly relevant, using a stick as position input would give you, what, five units of movement on either axis?

From what I can find online, the PS3 controller is 10-bit per axis (1024 positions on either axis), the Xbox 360 is either 8-bit (256 positions) or 16-bit (64k positions.)

A 25-way joystick of the type you describe wouldn't be usable for most console games, whether as a position or velocity input.

It sounds like you're defining "hardcore gamer" as a competitive professional or semi-professional gamer. If so, I guess that's fine, but irrelevant to whether Valve will sell a lot of controllers. That's just not an important demographic.

Much more important is the platform market share for hardcore games, like CoD and Battlefield. It simply isn't true that people prefer the PC version [1], despite the inferior controls. CoD sells vastly more copies for console than for PC [2]. It's not even close.

If Valve wants to break into that market and compete with Xbox and PS, it needs a controller.

[1] Though I do, and it sounds like you do too.

[2] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31995/Exclusive_Black_Ops... (I recognize this doesn't include Steam sales, but the point still stands)

> I recognize this doesn't include Steam sales

Who buys retail games anymore?

Many of the more serious FPS console gamers do you a mouse and keyboard: http://xim3.com/

Console will always be at disadvantage to the PC in this genre due to its low frame rate (usually 121+ fps is considered slandered for the genre in order to make use of a 120hz refresh rate). Consoles currently output about 20 - 30 fps, not really acceptable for competitive play in a FPS.