Who said lying? Don't be so black and white. Many people in the PC space (either consciously or subconsciously) are unwilling to be critical of anything Valve does, does it mean they're lying no but they are liable to sugarcoating reviews and just generally giving anything associated with Valve a green-pass because well Valve are so popular with so many people, I don't want to spoil the fun and get all negative on them (*insert lame Gabe memes here*)

Can't help but feel it would have been better with trackball.

It's not bile it's euphemism monkeynuts, relax a little. I'm sure you're one of those insufferables who get upset if someone adds the -fag to the end of a word.

Also I think it's worth noting that I think Steam/Valve could badly damage PC gaming (I know right, it couldn't get much worse) but pushing this Big Picture/SteamOS/Controller stuff, not just by attracting consolefriends to PC/Steam, but because this could give certain developers even more leeway to not give a shit about KBM controls on games that have console versions. If Valve is pushing their controller and guaranteed controller compatibility and all this, these devs might not give much of a fuck about changing anything for the PC version because well all those kids on PC are apparently using controllers anyway! I don't personally care because I don't play console ports, but some people might.
As a real example, there's that "State of Decay" game which came to Steam sans keyboard/mouse control, obviously Steam are providing the platform in which this kind of behavior is allowed.

I barely remember the last time I had one of those. They could be a mess after a while though, they certainly require dust maintenance after a while. I've never actually used anything with 'haptic feedback' before so it's hard to say what this would be like. I guess the notion that someone can play hardcore Super Meatboy with this is somewhat comforting.

Apple Pippin controller tried that. Anyway, I've been trying to use a thumb trackball (Logitech M570) with PC FPS games, and while I feel it is better than using an analog stick for aiming, I never got fully hang of it. I wouldn't be surprised that I'd find a "concave trackpad" like that on the Steam gamepad even superior to the M570.

Other potential things against a trackball:

- It is probably more expensive, breaks more easily (moving parts) and requires more maintenance (cleaning) than a trackpad.

- The trackball could probably emulate only a mouse. I think a concave trackpad can emulate both a mouse, and an analog stick. So, if there was a separate trackball on the gamepad, it should also have the separate analog thumbsticks on top of it. It could become quite crowded design... I think the old Apple Pippin "trackball gamepad" didn't have any analog sticks at all, so it was basically just an old SNES kind of digital gamepad, with a trackball.

Think how you would play e.g. a racing game or a space combat sim with the trackball.

Shhhhh, don't feed the troll.

Well, one could say it's equally annoying to have their critical thinking and honest appraisal called simple fear of change.

Has this actually been stated somewhere? I went over the announcement and it kept referring to "your Steam games". Now, this might just be the usual "pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist" marketing, but has there actually been a statement about non-Steam games or how dependent on Steam this is?

There's a legacy mode and it'd be pretty huge dicks of them to not have it work outside of steam, not to mention (somewhat) limit the audience.

If this controller works as advertised, sign me up for day one. I want to play all the mouse/keyboard games on my TV. For now, I have my PC connected to both TV and 24" LCD, but after getting used to couch gaming, playing at a desk feels more like a chore, even with good comfortable chair.
And I really want to replay Mass Effect trilogy on my TV, but it has no controller support...with Steamroller, it might actually be perfectly playable.

After reading a bit about the Steam controller, I think it's an interesting concept, and I'm curious how it'll fare in actual gaming practice. I can see some pros and cons, but the combination of two track pads and a touch screen is so unusual that I think I really have to try it before I can give any qualified statements.

First impressions:

- Touchscreen opens up lots of possibilities, but is of limited use on a controller. When playing, I want to watch the game, not my controller. In theory a touchscreen would allow for very flexible controls tailor-made for each game, but I'm skeptical whether the implementation remains useful in the heat of the action.

- Two trackpads: Same as above basically, though at the moment I'm not sure in which way exactly applications would benefit from this. I'd have to see the actual implementation. Customizability will be important especially with regard to the pads.

- The controller looks rather small (on the images that also show hands).

- Decent amount of buttons - could be more though, and the placement is not ideal. It looks like most fingers will not have any function besides holding the controller, which is a wasted opportunity. This will be less of a problem when the device drivers are very good, and allow for things like shift buttons or command chains, but it's still suboptimal imho.

So, in short, I'm 50:50 between curiosity and skepticism. ;)

It's unlikely that the Steam controller will replace my favorite controlling device though. That's a "Microsoft Strategic Commander" - the only device I know which gives you free movement in 10 directions (left arm/wrist), and 26 flexible freely programmable actions (left fingers), while still leaving your right hand completely free for the mouse. Moving, aiming, and selecting a special action (like a spell) can all be done in one swift move. Obviously, the device was too good to be true, and so it's been abandoned by Microsoft more than a decade ago ... but so far, I've always managed to find a replacement when I needed one.

It could be good.

Some say that it would suck on some games. Which it prob does. Still, I like to play in some games with a controller so I don't mind some controller. Make plenty and one is awesome.

It looks horrible indeed though.
I like PC games because mods and Ini-files (also I'm mostly poor).
..those freaking field of visions.. man those suck and are insane.

The verge article said they built it to be hacked, or in a open way in the spirit Linux. I don't remember the exact wording, but it sounds like there shouldn't be any huge barriers. I think they win no matter who buys it.

I've read this one and it bothers me a bit. His wording sounds just a bit too hopeful that his qualms with the controller are his own and the lack of any sort of indication that it's more than just "functional", as opposed to mentioning that it felt great to use, seem to hint at the fact that it's not very comfortable to use without forcing yourself to adapt which doesn't bode well.

I am also a bit concerned about the way he talks about the lack of tactile response. The way he words it, it sounds a bit like on-screen touch controls in mobile games where it's all too easy to "fall off of" or miss a button.