Steam Controller: Revolutionary?

This has definitely been the week of Steam, with Valve making three big announcements. Steam Machines have been announced, and also the operating system called SteamOS. The third and last thing that Valve has announced is their own controller, the Steam Controller. If you give it a quick glimpse it might look like an ordinary controller, but it definitely isn't a controller you have seen the last past few years.

The first thing you will notice about the Steam Controller is that there are two things missing: there are no thumbsticks. Instead of the thumbsticks, Valve has placed two "high-resolution trackpads" that are driven by the players thumbs. With a lot of text and fancy words Valve claims that these trackpads have the resolution and precision that you would expect from a computer mouse. The new controller has a pretty cool feature, the controller will be compatible with both old and new games.

In the center of the controller is a touchscreen which can be used for various things. You will be able to scroll through Steam with it, but developers will also get access to the API so it might get some other uses such as maps or game-menu's as well. Instead of the touchscreens that we all know, this one is actually clickable. What that means that you will have to actually click the screen if you want to select something.

Just like the Steam Machines there will also be a beta for the Steam Controller, and if you participate for the Steam Machine than you will also participate for the Steam Controller. The two differences from the final version of the controller is that there won't be a touchscreen on the beta controller and the controller won't be won't be wireless in the beta.

Valve now has it's own OS, it will have its own hardware and now also has its own controller. Will all these things combined change the way that we play games, and is this enough for Valve to conquer the living room? It will definitely change the way that a lot of gamers play games, but will it turn console gamers into .. PC-console gamers?

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Steam OS and Steam Box announced

Valve has made two of the three announcements they are going to make, and it seems that the rumours were true: there will be a Steam Box. Actually, there will be multiple Steam Boxes or as Valve calls them, Steam Machines. These boxes will be running on Valve’s own operating system, which they have crowned as SteamOS.

Valve's Steam boxes are made for the living room, so we are expecting boxes that won't be a lot bigger than your average console. Valve is working together with multiple partners so they can bring a variety of Steam boxes on the market in 2014. All these boxes will have different specifications, prices and of course a difference performance. Since Valve is embracing open-source you will also be able to build your own Steam box with SteamOS running on it. Valve also states that it’s up to you what you do with the Steam Box, so if you feel like running a different OS on it, that’s perfectly fine as well.

Linux based SteamOS is designed for the TV and the living room, and it’s likely it will work a bit like the Big Picture mode that has been introduced last year. Everything will run in the Steam ecosystem, so you will have all your games, friends and achievements in there. The OS will allow you to stream games over your home network from your gaming machine to your Steam box, this means that you won’t need a powerful Steam box in your living room if you already have a powerful PC somewhere else in your house. Steam praises the OS for it’s openness, and developers and users will be able to add and remove certain functions from the OS.

Valve is also working together with many of the big media services, and they will be available on both Steam and Steam. It will “allow you to access your favorite music and video”, so we might be seeing services such as Netflix and Spotify appear on the platform. Steam’s new function called Family Sharing will also be available on SteamOS.

Valve is also looking for 300 beta testers to get sent a Steam box prototype, so if you are feeling lucky you can try to participate. Read more on how to do so here.

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