Steam Controller front shot, zoomed
Image: Valve

PC players and developers alike have a long history of bodging games designed with gamepad controls in mind to work with a mouse and keyboard - and the opposite is also true, mostly on the side of handheld developers who map the right analogue stick to a mouse, nominate some nearby buttons to serve as the mouse clicks and call it a day. Valve's new Steam Controller is meant to go further, delivering a kind of experience that offers nearly as much precision as a mouse, while still being something you can hold in your hands while sitting on your couch.

It's this capability that Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais points to as his all-time favourite feature of the Steam Controller: using a trackpad and gyro together to let gamepad users go toe to toe with those on mouse and keyboard, even in tactical FPS titles like Counter-Strike 2 - a game where there's no aim assist and the conventional wisdom is that using a controller puts you at a huge disadvantage.

"For the core controller functionality, one thing we're really proud of is the ability of the trackpad and trackpad and gyro together to really hold their own against mouse input", Pierre-Loup says. "People consider trackpads on their laptops as something that's serviceable, but you're not going to play a first-person or a third-person camera game with it and feel like you're coming out with a good experience."

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The Steam Controller is different though, thanks to inclusion of haptic feedback in the trackpad, and Grip Sense - a feature that lets you enable and disable gyro aiming just by adjusting your grip on the controller. That combination "actually lets you build muscle memory", according to Pierre-Loup, "and it's really similar to handling a mouse, in a way."

The idea is that, just like using your arm to make big movements of the mouse, and using your wrist to make finer adjustments, you have a similar two-tier system on the Steam Controller. Your trackpad becomes your high-sensitivity input, letting you quickly whip around to clear an angle while moving around the map, while the gyro is your lower-sensitivity implement, moving from the default head-height you should be aiming at to where the enemy is actually standing.

The combination is a powerful one, and Pierre-Loup says that Valve's testing suggests that Steam Controller players are at much less of a disadvantage than you might expect.

"If you get a bit of practice, we think that trackpad and gyro is actually a very good analogue to mouse controls. Just getting good at that control scheme and being able to play Counter-Strike or other games that require precise mouse aiming, and actually being closer to the performance of a mouse than the performance of a controller, we think that is a really exciting thing."

Pierre-Loup also mentioned that the Steam Controller is also able to handle the complete opposite situation, games with a ton of hotkeys that normally require a keyboard - think of 4X games like Civilization 7, simulation titles like Flight Simulator or automation games like Factorio.

"Being able to set radial menus and touch menus on the left trackpad with 16 hotkeys that can be changed is something that you can do with Steam Input on other controllers, but the hardware features of the Steam Controller make it go to the next level. You can play these games and actually get a good outcome from it."

The Steam Controller's current "add to cart" date is Monday May 4th and pricing has been confirmed at $99 for the US, £85 in the UK, €99 in Europe and $149 in Canada. We have a full preview and more from our Valve interview to come, so stay tuned.