This guy will have to wait for his younger brother.
It was available to buy starting noon local time. I refreshed the page until the buy option became available, but kept getting an error when submitting payment. Waited about half an hour and now it’s sold out. Ni modo I guess.
DO NOT BUY THEM FROM EBAY!
or any other one of those websites … the resellers are scum and you’ve waited this long, you can wait longer! hold strong!
No point anyway. It’s not like they’re difficult to manufacture or constrained by available components.
Don’t jinx us… we’re in the middle of a war, there are new tariffs every other day. I’m sure something could happen to the controllers supply chain.
Actually, that is a good point… That being said, Steam as a company stays entirely apolitical.
However, of course, someone at Valve would simply need to whisper anything Anti-trump, and Trump would actively invoke laws to sabotage them, and call them woke or whatever
Or they could just be caught in the crossfire, like they already have with the RAM shortage
Are they manufactured in the US that seems like a bad idea.
They were shipped into the US from Hong Kong, so probably manufactured (or at least assembled) in East Asia.
I was getting an error as well. I saw someone on Reddit say they just spammed the “confirm” button and it eventually went through.
So I did that for like 10 min and it worked
Yeah giving up for 30 mins probably wasn’t the right move. You just keep trying even when it isn’t working at all. I’ve gotten some great concert tickets that way.
It’ll be in stock again soon I’m certain. They’re gamepads, not limited edition Pokemon cards or super cutting edge HBM memory chips
Hey, at least you didn’t camp in front of the store and waited for hours in the freezing cold to go home empty handed. That’s how new hardware releases used to be. They haven’t restocked the Steam Deck in months but they will restock the controller soon, I believe.
I barely managed to get one, had to spend well over 20 minutes spamming the continue button, because the first couple of times I passed that screen something else failed (they even charged me one of those times but the purchase didn’t finish, so I imagine it will get reverted in a while).
I liked my old steam controller more in theory than in practice, I still have it and use it occasionally but it’s more of a rarity when I think the features make up for the lack of d-pad and right stick. But the Steam Deck is just ideal for me, from the moment I grabbed it I have been wanting a standalone controller with that same format and inputs.
In any case, sorry you didn’t get one now, I’m sure they’ll be back in stock very quickly, it’s likely they did a small batch first to test the waters on how much people wanted this. But production is probably ramping up just like what happened with the Steam Deck.
Oof. That’s rough. But given how insanely profitable these ~90 minutes must have been for Valve, I’m sure they’ll be back in stock in a few weeks since none of the components seem to have supply issues.
I managed to get one by just spam-clicking the continue button for about two minutes. I know, I’m part of the problem.
I never do that because there’s not much I need enough to commit that much, but also because I’m worried that the next week thirty of them will show up on my doorstep and I’ll realize I’m broke.
For me, the error was popping up before the payment confirmation screen, so it wouldn’t have been possible. Spamming the button worked for me.
But shit, if I did accidentally buy several, I’d just offload them at MSRP, probably to people on this site that couldn’t get one.
Same except for about 20 minutes, and that’s after wasting like 5 minutes looking for my wallet lol, so apparently I bought one of the last ones in stock
I knew the inventory would be sold in minutes, so I prepped. I loaded 150 EUR into my Steam wallet in case the 99 didn’t include taxes, I double checked that my shipping and billing info is automatically filled in, and I made sure to be at my computer one hour before the release time just in case I fucked up the time zone conversion.
Same here but with a 100. Had to spam click on payment but it went through after a couple of tries
Was 100 enough? Mine came out to like 106 or something, with tax
In the EU prices have to already include tax, so steam prices are exactly what it costs at checkout
Gotcha. Must be nice.
Looks like this in the end basically. They just reverse engineer the price so the tax gets it to the target price.
I actually got kinda lucky in that respect, I learned last week that it was coming out today, but I didn’t know when, and I stupidly didn’t set any reminders or anything. Thankfully I happened to remember the sale this morning and was able to find out the time it started literally 10 minutes before it went live.
Maybe they would have lost money overall. The store being down for 45 minutes, is not good fo business.
While true, they still sold out.
Ah, one of the dozen people who actually liked the original Steam controller! A rare sight indeed.
I actually didn’t like it very much. Had to dig it out of a drawer for this photo. The face buttons are in an awkward position and the left trackpad is a terrible D-pad substitute. But I loved the gyro, and if it didn’t invent grip buttons it was my first exposure to them at least, and both MS and Nintendo liked them, too, since the Xbox elite controller and switch 2 pro controller have them. I saw the potential and looked forward to Valve improving it, and by all accounts this new iteration is an improvement.
I’m also a sucker for mold-breaking attempts at better ergonomics. I own a Twiddler. Still can’t get the hang of it, but nothing ventured nothing gained.
Exact same, I loved the features but it just wasn’t very comfortable in my hands. The steam deck feels way better to me, and the new controller looks like that minus the screen, so I’ve been super excited for this.
That’s interesting. The comfort was the number 1 feature of the original controller for me. The deck is the one hurting my wrists.
I’ve heard a lot of other anecdotes from people who found the og controller really comfortable when others weren’t, so you’re definitely not alone there. Personally, I was constantly readjusting my grip but could never find that illusive sweet spot, so after awhile I’d start straining and cramping. I had a couple bumping around for a few years that I pulled out occasionally but I eventually sold them on eBay when their prices skyrocketed and mine were just collecting dust.
Whats the big deal with this controller anyway? I dont get it.
It has trackpad which allow you to play KB+mouse games very fluidly. Also they can be used to add radial or grid buttons to any game.
It has TMR sticks which means no drift and less power consumption.
It has a gyro.
It has 4 back buttons.
It’s fully compatible with steam Input so you can do crazy mappings of every single input.
It has capacitive sensors on the thumb sticks and handles so you can use that as input or modifiers.
It uses a dedicated dongle that has a latency comparable with plugged device according to some tests.
It also connects via cable or Bluetooth.
It’s very reparable friendly and Valve will be offering replacement parts.
It’s so good if you ignore the price, the symmetric thumbsticks, the awkward trackpads and the fact it only works on Steam games.
It’s so good if you ignore
the price
Which is fair considering the features
the symmetric thumbsticks
Which some of us prefer.
the awkward trackpads
Which are the biggest selling point of the controller, if you don’t want trackpads an 8BitDo has almost the same features.
and the fact it only works on Steam games.
That’s not a fact, in fact it’s quite wrong. The controller works outside of steam normally, it’s just that it’s mapped to common desktop inputs which are less than useful for games butake total sense in a world where it’s meant to be used plugged to a PC and you might need to click your way through to open Steam. But there are open source programs to map the inputs to a controller which is essentially what SteamInput does. At least that’s what the OG controller did and from the reviews of the new one seems to be exactly the same.
And before you say “but you have to install a third party tool” that’s also true for other controllers if you want full features.
I dont think it only works with steam games
I genuinely don’t understand the hype beyond valve fanboyism. They already released a steam controller years ago and it was actually terrible, like there’s a reason no one else has even bothered to try and copy the track pad controller gimmick, because it’s just bad.
Not sure if you’re trolling, or have been living under a rock. This new controller is the same as the Steam Deck layout, which has been extremely successful and well received.
The lack of twin thumbsticks are what killed the original.
This one is better, but aside from better trackpad placement, it doesn’t offer a lot above the PS5 controller, which a lot of people already have.
Still, they sold out, so mission successful I suppose. I’ve no doubt the same thing will happen when I try and get a Steam Frame.
The main failure of the original controller was the lack of two thumbsticks (just like the PSP). While the track pads made a lot of PC games playable with a controller some games were worse with one thumbstick.
This controller fixes my main compliant, has a dedicated d-pad, and what looks like better track pads. So it’ll be perfect for playing around 90% of games with one controller.
This. The original Steam Controller did not meet the de-facto standard baseline for controller layout established by the first DualShock[1] that games have learned to expect and build their control schemes around.
The Steam Controller 2 does have everything in that layout. It’s modeled after the Deck’s layout, which is quite good.
Ignoring the analog button - which is not part of that “standard” because the software does not even need to acknowledge its existence - and the vibrations (which many controllers have, but are not required for input to work) ↩︎
The original controller was like a concept car, lots of new ideas but not every one was guaranteed to stick. Plenty of them did stick though, like grip buttons and gyro control. The new controller is a more conservative iteration that takes what worked and drops what didn’t while acknowledging why the industry converged on the standard button layout all the way back in the late 90s. That’s exactly the sort of innovation I want to see.
I have mine still. Bought it at launch. Never went back. Best controller I’ve ever had the pleasure to use. I genuinly LOVE everything about it. I don’t even want the new one.
Can’t improve upon perfection
I’ve had 2 different ones, and both got the “R1” button broken. It’s a pity because it’s the best controller I’ve ever used
I have repaired this myself at least 4 different times. The piece is so flimsy. Still love this controller.
I’ll sorry to hear that. I suppose I’ve been fortunate enough to never have any issues at all with mine. I will be a sad day when it gives up. I don’t think I could play Elden Ring with any other controller.
They did a hardware launch perfectly for the Deck - Account of minimum age needed, and a queue to buy as devices became available. Why the hell did they go with the old, shit version that only serves scalpers that use bots to scoop up every item?
So headlines will say “sold out in minutes!!!” and create FOMO for the second wave. That’s my guess at least.
This doesn’t really seem like Valve’s MO
Why would you assume that is Valve’s reason
People like to add reasoning to chaos. Everything has to be planned out for some people instead of life happening and businesses do what they do naturally. Take advantage of situations when they can and make money. I like valve and plan on getting a machine or deck when they are restocked. I think it’s normal supply and demand with this one.
Oh, the picture is an old controller? What’s different about the new one?
Much closer to the steam deck. So has proper d pad, 2 analogue sticks with 2 square touch pads. Also has 4 back buttons, and capacitive touch sections on the grips. Has a few other features as well.
Why would you ever need more than one button to go back?
Oh… a button, that is on the back?
Yeah I realized my mistake halfway through writing this.
the price point isn’t outrageous, but it’s not compelling when an Xbox controller can be bought for a third the price. Track-pads are nice, but people playing Steam are often sitting right next to a keyboard and mouse anyway.
An xbox controller can be bought for a 3rd of the price
A used or older model one, maybe.
A new one is only $20 cheaper at $80.
Well, first of all an Xbox controller costs around 50 which is not a third of the price. Secondly the Xbox controller has literally less than half the inputs of the steam controller: Xbox controller has a d-pad, 2 joysticks, 2 triggers, 4 face buttons, 2 top buttons, play/pause buttons and the special power button; whereas the Steam controller also has 4 back buttons, 4 capacitive sensors, gyro, 2 trackpads (each of which on its own has a ridiculous amount of possibilities for usage) and 2 special buttons which are kinda irrelevant here. And that’s without mentioning the fact that TMR sticks are ridiculously better than traditional ones of the Xbox controller, or that the dongle works on a dedicated bandwidth instead of Bluetooth for the Xbox controller (because the dongle is sold separately I’m not considering it here, otherwise you need to add 20 to the total and then it’s DEFINITELY not a third of the price) so latency is much better.
Also, I’m not near a keyboard and mouse most of the time when playing, as I usually play on my TV. If I were near a mouse and keyboard I wouldn’t need a controller to begin with.
As a steamdeck owner, the ability to use the trackpads to play old keyboard/mouse games without having to sit at a computer, is great. I’ve been playing a lot of Dungeon Siege and Baldur’s Gate 2, released in early 2000’s with mouse/keyboard in mind, and they both work flawlessly.
The new Steam Controller is a welcome addition because the old Steam Controller doesn’t have the same button and joystick layout, plus its missing buttons, compared to the steamdeck. So when you want to dock the steamdeck and play your favorite first person shooter for example, and game on the TV in the livingroom, there’s no controller until now that matches what you’ve become accustomed to expecting with muscle memory, from playing on the steam deck.
Dude, it’s just a piece of plastic. You can wait a bit.
I’ll also be waiting for a mext batch… the steam frame will be a nightmare to get if it’s like this too… i have close to 9 000 hours in steamVR i wish that would count for something when getting the new headset.
It does. You had your fun, now it’s time fit the 0 hours gang.
I really hope a lot of new people jump in and discover how truly incredible VR games are :)
What are 3 of your favorite? That aren’t half life?
For a quick answer i’ll give you my most played VR games and i might update this comment tomorrow with actual preferences. Beatsaber, skyrim VR, grimlord, legendary tales, windlands, blade and sorcery, payday 2, behemoth, …
Thanks
