The new Steam Controller, one of the three new hardware Valve announced last year, will be launching on May 4, next week.
Like the Steam Deck, Valve isn’t shipping the Steam Controller directly to Malaysia and Southeast Asia. But judging by Steam Deck’s wide availability in this country despite not officially sold here, there’s a non-zero chance local retailers will bringing in import sets of the new Steam Controller.
In the US, the Steam Controller retails at a whopping $99 USD. For a comparison, the PlayStation DualSense controller is priced at $74 USD. That doesn’t quite translate through exchange rates, as the DualSense controller is retails at RM369 in Malaysia. But even if we use USD-to-MYR rate conversion of the time of writing, the new Steam Controller would set you back at least RM400. In other words, it’s really expensive for a controller tied exclusively to Steam.
That said, the Steam Controller does pack a lot of features, more than a standard DualSense or Xbox Wireless Controller does. The new Steam Controller comes with four mappable back buttons, a wireless puck that acts as its proprietary transmitter (the Wireless Adapter for Xbox controllers on PC are sold separately) and a charging dock.
It also has haptic feedback rumble and an interesting new “Grip Sense” gyro where it can detect if you are gripping the controller, an interesting way to enable or disable gyro controls, or as an additional way to map controls. It has two trackpads and motion control support.
Most importantly, the new Steam Controller has TMR analog sticks. Valve is simply dubbing it as “next-generation magnetic thumbsticks” which uses Tunneling Magnetoresistance tech that not only uses less power (so batteries last longer), but also more precise. This shouldn’t have parts that wear out that leads to joystick drifts like the common controllers which uses potentiometer-based sticks, but also a step up from the established hall-effect sticks that also use magnet tech.
The Steam Controller also includes infrared LEDs designed to work with the Steam Frame VR headset, which enables controller tracking in virtual reality. The Steam Controller can connect to a Steam Machine without a puck.
The pricing makes sense, it’s more souped-up than a standard controller from a console, but not as pricey as a PS5 DualSense Edge or an Xbox Elite Wireless controller.
Valve attempted the Steam Machine and Steam Controller before, but those did not take off. This new iteration of Valve hardware, informed from their experience of creating the industry-standard portable PC that is the Steam Deck, seems to be heading in the right direction.
There remains to be no release date or pricing for the new Steam Machine and the Steam Frame VR headset, understandably so due to the current prices of computer parts, in particular RAM.