When Valve announced SteamOS and Steam Machines, they also revealed the official Steam Controller which would be used to play games on the Steam Machine. It was a very unique design, somewhat controversial as it did away with traditional console controller buttons, D-pads, and analog sticks, but then again Steam Machines aren’t consoles, so they are meant to be played differently.
In fact Valve’s Eric Hope was quoted as saying, “We wanted to embody everything that made Steam and PC gaming in general great inside of a controller.” However further down the line Valve decided to make some changes to the controller and did away with the secondary display, and now it looks like Valve may have finalized the design, as you can see in the image above.
Based on the image above, it is pretty much the same design as what we saw last time, albeit much clearer. However at the same time in place of the secondary screen, Valve has added three new buttons: a Stop button, a Steam button, and a Play button.
We’re not sure what those buttons do specifically, but presumably it could be for media controls, pausing and resuming the game, and with the Steam button, we can only imagine that pressing it will launch Steam in which gamers can then choose to navigate to other games or browse the Steam Store.
Since we haven’t tried the controller out for ourselves yet, we can’t speak to its user-friendliness or ease of use, but hopefully once Steam Machines begin making its way into the hands of eager gamers, we will find out.
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