Valve has packed the new Steam Controller with multiple ways to control a PC game from the comfort of your sofa. It has standard thumbsticks (phew), a pair of trackpads, and gyro controls. Three for the price of… well, we don’t know the price of the Steam Controller yet. Though I hadn’t considered gyro controls for my gaming PC prior to actually using the Steam Controller, and turns out, neither had most of Valve.
“So, there’s a whole community of gamers who really are into gyro aiming,” Steve Cardinali, a Valve engineer working across the Steam Controller and Steam Frame Controllers, says.
Cardinali is not the person primarily responsible for adding gyro controls. Cardinali explains it as a “typical Valve story”, involving one passionate Valve employee that just had to get the feature into the design.
“There’s a guy at Valve who’s super into gyro and the gyro aim community,” Cardinali says. "And when he heard we were working on the controller, he came downstairs and was like, ‘you guys got to add some kind of grip sense for gyro’.
“He came and moved his desk down by us and sat with us for like, six, eight months or something, and helped us figure it out because he’s really in that community. He helped us lay it all out, figure out how it could best help them, and then just recently, he helped do a bunch of software work to help optimise it for us.”
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Valve’s hot hardware
(Image credit: Future)
Steam Frame: Valve’s new wireless VR headsetSteam Machine: Compact living room gaming boxSteam Controller: A controller to replace your mouse
The entire Steam Controller becomes an input with gyro controls, similar to Nintendo’s Joy-Cons. I’m told there are many ways to use gyro controls on PC—Cardinali notes that Steam Input lets you map the gyro to whatever you like—and I’m offered to test the Steam Controller’s capabilities in a game of Balatro. I’m tilting and aiming the controller to move the mouse cursor here. It’s pretty accurate, more so than thumbsticks, and as I said to Cardinali at the time, you get used to it pretty quickly.
The gyro controls also offer a grip sensing feature, which turns on the gyro when you’re holding the controller, and disables it when it’s released. It also can be used to recenter the gyro. This might prove an important feature if you’re barrelling towards the ground in a fighter jet in Battlefield 6 due to dropping your Controller.
Though it’s an interesting glimpse behind the curtain for Valve. A surprisingly small company, I’m told that the engineers all mostly work in one building to make this sort of collaboration easier, and they play test everything themselves.
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“If you’re at home and you’re thinking, ‘I wish this could do this’, we’ve probably thought about that, too,” Josh Hudman says. “We’re using it and we think the same.”
So, that’s why this is a typical Valve story. A passion-project turned feature in brand new hardware set for a global launch. Whether this will be the vindication for all those gyro control fans out there, I’m not so sure. I think I’d rather use the trackpads. But I’m willing to give it a go, and if it makes me a convert, I and everyone else better give this Valve engineer and their ensemble of gyro users their due.
Steam Controller specifications
Compatibility Windows/Mac/Linux Thumbsticks Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) Connectivity Bluetooth, 2.4 GHz (via Puck or Steam Machine, up to four controllers at once), USB wired Battery life 35 hour+ Extra features Gyro controls w/ grip sense, HD haptics, 2x trackpads, 4x rear grip buttons Release date 2026 Price TBC
The Steam Controller goes on sale sometime next year, date to be confirmed. As is the price. We know, however, it will feature TMR thumbsticks, twin trackpads with haptic feedback, 2.4 GHz via an included puck, Bluetooth, and 35 hours or more of battery life.
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