I really hope the controller will be just a steam deck without the screen. Dual trackpads and 4 grip buttons is the best controller layout I’ve used

In particular I want the two joysticks the steam deck has! Touchpads + joysticks NOT one or the other. If the steam controller came out with that and back buttons it would set a new standard and decisively reorient how people think about gamepads with respect to complex pc games.

If it just has two touchpads or two joysticks it really isn’t an evolutionary step up, more of a lateral step that improves precision (unless you include gyro… which the next steam controller needs to have).

I know this seems like an esoteric point but in my experience steam deck layouts for complex games all rely on the steam deck having 4 xy input devices.

The next steam controller should prioritize this scheme of the four basic inputs + triggers and buttons to help precipitate the concept in peoples minds that a steam style gamepad has two joysticks and two touchpads.

Longterm establishing this control “standard” as a noun in the collective minds of indie and strategy game fans and developers is by far the most important thing a new steam deck controller could do.

If an indie developer can buy a relatively inexpensive steam controller and physically test out and make some steam deck bindings for their game…they are that much more likey too.

Indie game devs provide the afterburners and linux gaming is assured a strong future!

Suddenly the limitations of sticking to a proprietary (in some ways) slow moving ecosystem of consoles start to look radically more confining in comparison because the difference became tactile and immediately tangible.

I never understood why Steam didn’t just make a variant of the original Steam controller that just had the classical button layout without touchpads. I liked the touchpad version for some games but it’s really clunky to use for stuff I’m otherwise used to have sticks for. I really like the Steam controller’s grip.

I would’ve loved the same controller with an Xbox layout or something or even interchangeable parts/layouts. Although that would probably drive up the price a ton.

The Steam Deck controls but with better ergonomics. Please.