An aerospace worker and programmer created a GitHub-hosted program that lets your Steam Controller automatically walk back towards its charging puck as soon as you place it down on your desk. The web app, called the Auto-Charge Vision Tracker, uses a camera and computer vision to determine where your controller is, then it uses its powerful built-in motors to make it creep towards its docking station to top itself up when you’re not using it. The great thing about this web app is that you don’t need to install anything on your PC to use it. Just go to the website, connect your Steam Controller, ensure your camera is directly overhead your desk, click the puck, the front, and the back of your controller, and you should be good to go.

This is an interesting use case for the Steam Controller’s haptic motors, which are primarily designed to give feedback to gamers. Although this app, which you can run in the background on your browser, is designed to make recharging your controller more comfortable, you do need a flat surface without any obstructions to ensure that the Steam Controller can reach the charging puck. Aside from that, the vibration and movement on the desk tends to cause abrasion on the controller’s surface, meaning you’ll soon find flat spots appearing on the surface that contact your desk. Ray Foss, the maker of the GitHub repo, said that adding rubber feet should help prevent this and might also give the controller better acceleration and handling.

Another programmer has created something similar before — a web app that uses the controller’s rumble motor to let it slip and slide on your desk. But what makes this project different is that instead of manually “driving” your Steam Controller, it uses computer vision to automatically guide the controller back towards the charging puck, making it look like a robot vacuum.

These apps have limited usability — after all, the Steam Controller would still be unable to hop from the coffee desk in your living room to the TV console where your charging puck and Steam Machine are likely sitting. Nevertheless, it shows Valve’s commitment to making it easy for gamers to use their devices the way they want to. The company even released the CAD files for the Steam Controller and Puck back in May 2026, just a few days after the controller became widely available. But if you want to give this curiosity a try, you can easily do so by going to the Auto-Charge Vision Tracker website. The program’s files are also readily available on GitHub if you want to play around with the program and make your own version.

A developer has created a Chromium browser-based tool that turns Valve's second-gen Steam Controller into a self-propelled RC car, steering it across a flat surface in real-time with no app or driver installed. The page connects to the controller over WebHID, a browser standard for talking directly to USB and Bluetooth devices, and moves it by pulsing the gamepad's rumble motors. The Steam Controller first went on sale for $99 in early May and promptly sold out.

The tool utilizes the controller’s rumble motors, which, at the right frequency, cause the entire chassis to vibrate and creep across the surface in a chosen direction. The browser handles “steering” by varying the pulses sent to each gamepad stick, so leaning the output toward one motor turns the controller as it crawls. It’s the same type of vibration-driven locomotion that powers cheap “bristlebot” toys.

As for connecting to the Steam Controller, WebHID grants low-level hardware access from the webpage once the user approves the controller via the browser’s device picker, so the entire setup runs inside a single tab with nothing to download. WebHID is only supported in Chromium browsers, such as Chrome and Edge, and not Safari or Firefox.

Naturally, the site comes with some small print that explains that the service is offered “as-is” with no warranty, and warns that driving the controller across the ground scrapes it and wears it down over time. It recommends flat, smooth surfaces that keep the gamepad moving and reduce abrasion.

The community has been hard at work tinkering with the second-gen controller since its May launch. Valve released the Steam Controller’s CAD files under a Creative Commons license shortly after launch, explicitly inviting users to design their own accessories. The gamepad pairs dual trackpads, gyro controls, and grip buttons, a mix of inputs Valve walked through in its developer interview with Tom's Hardware, and that range of hardware has drawn a wave of experiments since units reached buyers.

The repurposed rumble motors here have also been a sore spot for the controller. The firmware quirks caused the rumble to behave erratically or cut out entirely in some games, a problem Valve has been working to patch. Demand has stayed high enough that resellers listed units above $300 after the launch stock sold out, and Valve has since opened a reservation system to push back against scalping bots.

In a June 18 update, Valve said that “initial demand exceeded our expectations,” but that it has “no plans to stop making Steam Controller.” Those now joining the reservation queue will be given one of three timeframes — September 2026, December 2026, or 2027 — for when they can expect to receive an order email with an option to purchase.

Thrustmaster has just unveiled its latest HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) system, featuring exclusive branding and a few internal upgrades. The T.Flight Hotas 5 Microsoft Flight Simulator Edition works on PS5, PS4, and PC, and comes with plug-and-play support for the game with a pre-configured profile. It's listed for $109.99 on Amazon, same as the Hotas One, and $10 cheaper than the previous Hotas 4 system.

• T.Flight Hotas 5 MFS Edition

While the chassis and design between the Hotas X, Hotas 4, Hotas One, and the new Hotas 5 are basically identical, there is a real difference underneath. Thrustmaster has swapped the 10-bit sensor with a 16-bit sensor, offering significantly improved precision that translates into 65,536 distinct steps. This should allow for much more responsive micro-adjustments and reduce that "notchy" feeling older models had.

The shell itself has two extra buttons now, bringing the total to 14. Since it's compatible with PlayStation consoles, those extra buttons correspond to the native DualShock/DualSense controls like Share. You'll find a Microsoft Flight Simulator logo on the sides where the Thrustmaster logo usually resides, and the color scheme reflects that branding. The black, white, and blue also blend well with PS5 consoles.

You still get the detachable body where the throttle and the stick can easily separate from each other with a cable running in between them. The T.Flight Hotas 5 features 5-axis control — pitch, roll, throttle, and two options for yaw/rudder. Speaking of which, there's a dual-rudder system onboard so you can either physically twist the joystick or use the rocker paddle integrated right into the back grip of the throttle handle.

The Hotas 5 is also compatible with Thrustmaster's T.Flight Rudder Pedals if you want to add an extra facet of immersion in your setup. Overall, it's a solid entry point into the world of flight sims, especially if you're on console. Regardless of the device you play on, though, the Hotas 5 is fully customizable, so you can fine-tune your experience for every aircraft, helicopter, or glider. And for just $109.99, it's a great upgrade over previous models offered by the company.

Valve's Steam controller will be available for preorder here starting at 10AM PT today.

Valve’s Steam Controller quickly became a runaway hit, selling out in an astonishing 30 minutes after its official launch. However, Valve is giving its aficionados who didn’t get one in the first wave another opportunity to purchase the controller. The company has announced a new reservation system that opens at 10 AM PT today, allowing eager customers to reserve their own Steam Controller.

Valve has already committed to replenishing its Steam Controller stock for customers who missed out during the initial launch frenzy. To manage the overwhelming interest and ensure a fair purchasing process, Valve will open a reservation queue at 10 AM PT. Interested buyers can go and secure their place in line.

Once the Steam Controller is back in stock, Valve will begin sending out order e-mails in the same order as the reservations were received. Therefore, early registrants are given priority. To prevent scalpers and resellers from exploiting the system, Valve has implemented several requirements as security measures.

Valve has limited reservations to one Steam Controller per user. In addition, users who have already purchased a Steam Controller are ineligible to reserve another unit to discourage stockpiling. To address concerns about scalpers creating new Steam accounts to circumvent these requirements, Valve has implemented several measures.

Any Steam account wishing to participate in the reservation must have made at least one purchase on Steam before April 27, 2026. This requirement significantly reduces the likelihood of fake or newly created accounts exploiting the system. Valve is also requiring that each participating account be in good standing. In other words, there should not be any existing bans or payment disputes on the account.

Having a reservation doesn't mean you've secured your Steam Controller, either. Once Valve initiates the next phase and begins sending order e-mails, buyers will have a three-day (72-hour) window to complete their Steam Controller purchase. If you’re not in the habit of regularly checking your e-mail, we recommend you remain vigilant for the next few weeks, or you could lose your chance to buy a Steam Controller.

The Steam Controller launched for $99 on May 4. It only took 30 minutes for it to sell out. The demand was so high that Valve's payment system crashed almost immediately after the controller's launch. It didn't take long for scalpers to start flipping the controller on eBay for over $300. By combining purchase history checks and account status verification, Valve aims to combat scalpers and bots and put Steam Controllers in the hands of legitimate customers.

The timeline for restocking Steam Controllers will vary by location. Valve has announced that reservation fulfillment will begin in the United States and Canada next week. Customers in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia, on the other hand, can expect their orders to be processed in the coming weeks.

Valve just released the CAD files for the Steam Controller and the Puck, which is used to charge and connect the controller to your PC. According to the Steam Community blog post, the STP and STL files are publicly available under a Creative Commons license on GitLab, making it easier to modify and create 3D printed accessories for both gadgets. A few reference files also note off-limits areas, as placing anything there will interfere with normal operations (such as the antenna and magnetic connectors).

Just like the Steam Machine, Valve envisions the Steam Controller to be endlessly customizable, at least in its physical look. Even though the Steam Machine doesn’t have a definite launch date yet, especially as it has been seemingly pushed back multiple times due to the AI-driven memory chip crisis, we’ve already seen a couple of accessories designed to customize the look of the living room PC console.

These 3D CAD files are available under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, meaning anyone who uses them is free to share their creations provided they attribute the original creator, use them solely for non-commercial purposes, and distribute their creations under the same or a compatible license. We can already envision some of the possibilities enabled by these files, including 3D-printed smartphone holders, charging bases, table hooks, and more. But if you plan to sell your creations, you must secure a different license from Valve, as Creative Commons doesn’t cover that use case.

This isn’t the first time that Valve has released the 3D CAD files of their hardware. The Steam Deck arrived on store shelves on February 25, 2022, but the company released its official CAD files a couple of weeks earlier. This resulted in a vibrant community of 3D printed accessories for the Steam Deck on Printables, allowing gamers and enthusiasts to experiment with various builds to improve and customize their gaming experience.

Hopefully, Valve does the same for the Steam Machine, releasing the 3D files for the console a couple of weeks before its release. Many gamers were excited for its expected release in early 2026, but the RAMageddon has forced the company to push back its launch to “first half of 2026” and then to “this year.” If and when Valve releases the 3D CAD files for the Steam Machine, it’s likely the much-anticipated console will finally arrive within a couple of weeks, give or take a few days.

When we reviewed the Steam Controller, we had the chance to sit down with Valve and talk about our experiences using it and ask questions about it.

We talked with Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais and Steve Cardinali, a mechanical engineer on the Steam Controller team, to talk more about the controller's design, the fact that it works only with Steam, and to learn more about how the company is dealing with latency, among many other topics. We published excerpts from this interview in a story alongside the review. Here, we're presenting the full transcript of our conversation.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Andrew E. Freedman, Tom's Hardware: So I've been playing around with the Steam Controller. I have questions about why you made some of the choices you did. I also have some questions about the Steam philosophy behind the controller. So I want to get into all those. I think the first thing is, why is now the time to make a controller again? The Xbox controller is widely seen as the default. The PlayStation controller has better PC support than ever. I was just plugging it in for some comparisons and had a whole bunch of PC drivers. Why is now the time for Valve and Steam to get back into the controller game?

Pierre-Loup Griffais, Valve programmer: Yeah, actually, on the PlayStation side, we've been working closely with Sony to enable that stuff and make it work as well as possible out of the box. So we expect the situation to be pretty good there.

In terms of our controller, I think that if you look at efforts like the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller, they're more or less all coming from the same spot, which is we had a bunch of Steam Deck users that were using their Steam Deck in all kinds of different ways, and some of these ways included docking on a TV, right? We got some feedback that while they really appreciated having the same exact experience with respect to like the UI and being able to get in and out of their games quickly and all that, docking a Deck meant missing some of the inputs, right? Like leaving some inputs behind, because you're leaving the Deck on the dock. And so I think the Steam Controller is a great experience for that. You have all the same inputs that you're familiar with. It's pretty much the exact same layout as the Deck, with a bunch of improvements on it, but also just for PC as a whole.

I think the Deck was a great data point on that input scheme working really well to both work for games designed with controllers and games designed without and, you know, take control of your desktop and use a bunch of PC apps and all that. So that stuff's been looking really good. And so making a controller, you know, as a standalone version of those same inputs, I think, is a logical next step there.

Freedman: One thing I was very surprised about when I first plugged the Steam Controller in, was that the setup flow really is pretty minimal, right? Update your firmware, here's how to enter Big Picture Mode, and off you go. And I think in many ways, to get the most out of the controller, it had me digging deeper in Steam Input than I think I admittedly ever have before. Did you ever consider having more sorts of teaching moments about Steam Input for newer users? Or did you just kind of kind of assume people would sort of dig in as needed?

Steve Cardinali, mechanical engineer on the Steam Controller team: You know, we wanted it to be out of the box, easy to use for people who maybe just want a controller that works like a controller and how they would expect, so that you're seeing that element there, of course. And a lot of thought went into that process. But on top of that, in developing this controller, and along with the original Steam controller in the Steam Deck. A lot of work has gone in Steam Input, like you're saying. And there's a lot, a lot there. And one of the things that the controller team is working on right now is actually a couple rounds of how-to tutorials on like how to set up your track pads in these certain ways, and the ways that we find work best; how to set up gyro; different input mappings' and layouts that we have found success with to get people started to get exposed to Steam Input and all the power it has behind it without being too overwhelming.

Griffais: It's really important to us that if you don't want to deal with any of that stuff, you don't have to, right? That the surface level experience gets you controller compatibility in games that are meant for controllers without any sort of tinkering. So the Steam Input stuff is there if you want it, but we don't want it to be a required element to just experience the baseline functionality there.

Freedman: Was there ever consideration for instance, the way Steam Deck had a game, I'm blanking on the name.

Griffais: Aperture Desk Job.

Freedman: Right. Was something like that ever a consideration for people who hadn't used the Steam Deck before or maybe might be considering this for the first time on a desktop or eventually, a Steam Machine? "Hey, here's how you get used to the input."

Griffais: Actually, I think that — and this might still be a conversation that's ongoing — but there were some conversations here about making Desk Job work well with the controller as well, because 99% of what you get through Desk Job is actually controller functionality. There is one step, I think, where it teaches you to use the touchscreen on the deck and maybe a microphone, and so I think we were thinking about making some adjustments so that it could be used just with the Steam Controller on a PC to teach you the same elements around motion controls, trackpads and all that that, you know, it walks you through. I'm not sure where those discussions are, but I think that was in the cards at some point.

Freedman: That's really interesting. So speaking of features and functionality, I happen to be playing a lot of Resident Evil 9 on my Steam Deck, and transitioning to the Controller felt very much like playing on my Steam Deck. I'm pretty sure that's the goal. When you were deciding to make a controller out of the Steam Deck, how do you decide which features from other controllers and the Steam Deck to include?

You have some from a lot of what you might consider more "basic" controllers, right? You know, your face buttons, things like rumble. Then you have things that you might consider from "elite" style controllers, for lack of a better term, right? Back buttons, gyro. So how did you decide that "OK, we're going to do back buttons, but we're not going to do replaceable thumb sticks, or we're not going to do replaceable back paddles." Where do you sort of decide?

Cardinali: Sure, yeah. For the controller, at least, it was, I wouldn't say, straightforward, but we had the guiding principle of Steam Deck users who get this controller, it should feel very similar. And it shouldn't be like a bunch of new stuff in their face that they have to then go and to the Input layout configurator and change settings, right? We wanted it to be natural. You're playing a game on your Steam Deck, and you go sit on your couch. You play it on Controller, it feels similar. So that helped us kind of keep the feature set down to what we had in Steam Deck.

The one main thing that kind of crept in that you probably have noticed or heard about is the Grip Sense. We're always trying to highlight new ways that you can play mouse and keyboard games — like competitive mouse and keyboard games — with a controller. The original Steam Controller did a great job of that, and then we carried over those trackpads and gyro over to this new controller. But as the gyro community becomes more and more prevalent, they do all sorts of things to enable and disable gyro for ratcheting. And we wanted to put something in there for them, for that community, to make sure this supports them in a competitive style as well. So that one kind of snuck in there, because we feel like that's an important feature for those kinds of games. Everything else is like. We didn't want to overburden the product with too much additional cost, or weight, or battery consumption. We wanted it to be a great controller for everybody. So we tried to really focus in on what we thought was the core, important feature set with this, you know, extra bonus in there.

Griffais: Yeah, some of these questions apply to the design of the Steam Deck too, right? Like, how did some of these inputs get in there? And what did not get in there? I think, like Steve said, every time we look at an input, we're conscious of overburdening the user. Like, having too many inputs is really not something that we want to see. And you know, the cost, the weights, everything comes into play there, But for for the back buttons in particular, I think we saw pretty early, including the first Steam Controller, that we had a bunch of players that felt limited in what they could do while manipulating the camera. And we thought it was really important to have all the functions in the game still available while you're fine-tuning the camera. We saw a bunch of users use claw grip to counteract that, right, where you're using your thumb and your index fingers to still have access to the diamond buttons, even though you're fine-tuning the stick. And we thought back buttons was a really good solution to that. So on the Steam Deck, you know, the four of them tested really well, and they weren't too invasive, right? Like, they're disabled by default. They're just part of the grip. You don't really have to think about it.

Freedman: Right.

Griffais: Grip sense is a similar thing, right? Like, it's, it's in because it doesn't really change how you have to approach the controller if you don't really use it. And so it's, it's this easy, additive thing that doesn't perturb things that way. It and is, is really, easy for us to — well, I mean, it's not that easy. There's a lot of considerations there. But it was doable, I guess, to put it in while retaining the whole feature set and not compromising the rest of the, you know, the core principles around the controller there, which are, first and foremost, have all the inputs that you would expect from regular controllers in the place that your fingers expected. Which is something that was really important for us on the Deck as well. So that the diamond buttons, the bumper trigger, the analog sticks all kind of fall into place, and then all the extra inputs are there if you need them, just like the software features for configurability.

All-new TMR sticks

Freedman: The other big addition you didn't mention is the TMR joysticks. That didn't make it into the Steam Deck or the Steam Deck OLED. So why was the controller the right place to start?

Griffais: I think the answer there is that we tried seeing if the TMR sticks would work in the Deck, right? And it was a little bit early for that. I think the technology was nascent, and the vendors there were, you know, new into the market, but we tried to see if it would have made sense for the Deck, for the Deck OLED, and, you know, we were looking at it. And so, I think, in the Steam Controller timeframe, it was just ready enough that it made sense. But I think we've seen the value around it from the get go, we tried to make it work pretty hard.

Freedman: Were there any sort of technical discussions on using TMR versus Hall effect when you're designing it?

Cardinali: You know, it primarily came down to which version of the technology we were most comfortable with using, which felt most mature and ready for us to use. But, you know, TMR, it has all the same pros as Hall effect, but the extra benefit it has is that it has lower power consumption. So that's like a huge benefit for why we went down that path, right? We don't have to eat as much battery life when using these new sticks.

Freedman: Why not put a headphone jack for passthrough audio on the controller? You're on the couch, you might want to be chatting. Why not? Why leave that one off?

Griffais: It's a hard one. I mean, it's just very, very hard to productize, like in terms of the audio bandwidth and the additional cost and complexity in the system design. I think it's something we evaluated, and then we looked at all these other features, and we focused on that instead. No, it's not to say that we don't see the value there. So it's more than it didn't make the cut this time around. Because, you know, the other things were more important when it came down to prioritization.

Connectivity

Freedman: Let's talk about the Puck. I have never seen a dock for a controller that wasn't huge before, right? It's always a big stand. So at what point did it come about that you were going to turn a 2.4 GHz wireless solution into a charger? Because it's made it hard for me to get the best battery life, because it's so easy for me to just take it and put it down and walk away and think, "Oh, I put it in the natural spot."

Cardinali: Yeah, well, we did our job then, right? [Griffais laughs] I mean, that was, that's honestly primarily one of the reasons, right? We knew we wanted a proprietary wireless connection, just to make sure that we had a robust, low-latency connection, and we can control the end-to-end conversation so that we can guarantee performance. But it's a hard thing to ask customers to have a little dongle and, like, plug it in somewhere. And then a lot of people solve that problem by having a dock, which adds extra value, but from our perspective, we wanted to minimize the burden to the desk. Right? Your desk base, some people have small desks. A big dock can take up a lot of space.

And the Puck itself — We know there's an active community of makers that use our products, and we have people internal [sic] who have designed and printed their own little mounts that hold the puck as a full dock. And we expect people to do stuff like that with this, and keeping it small allows people to do that without kind of over-prescribing how they design it and use it around it. And then it has the added benefit that it has this nice, satisfying little click when you put it over, it snaps into place. You don't have to worry about plugging it in. It kind of came about just because we knew we needed that connection. We were trying to solve problem with getting away from your PC, as well, with wireless interference. Just kind of popped up out of all those. How do we make this a good user experience.

Freedman: Speaking of connection, you recommend Bluetooth 5 or higher. How did you combat latency here? And you have a 250 Hz polling rate. We are seeing some things go up to 8,000 Hz. For me, I can't tell the difference. How do you settle on what type of connection to use to reduce latency?

Griffais: In terms of what we're working back from, it's very much the actual experience, right? So we're looking at the polling rates of the internal components and what they're actually able to report their updated data. Every component there that has analog data or digital buttons, has different performance characteristics when it comes to how quickly you can poll them from the MCU [microcontroller unit] and the trackpad, and the analog triggers. And analog sticks are all going to have different characteristics. But we wanted to make sure that we weren't leaving anything on the table where the transport, like getting the data to the PC would actually, you know, gatekeep, limit. any of the core potential of those parts. So that's kind of how we picked our core update right there, which I think, you know, is pretty high-performance. There's a lot of updates there.

But then, when we look at the transport, we think we got to a pretty good place with Bluetooth, right? Where Bluetooth, if you have one controller connected, the performance is actually pretty comparable to what you would get over our direct link using the Puck, right? But as soon as you add more controllers into the picture, that's where the limits of Bluetooth start showing up. So if you have two controllers over Bluetooth, the latency is actually doubled, and then it keeps going like that, right to the point that it becomes very noticeable, even for people that are not looking for that kind of stuff. So the custom protocol there, when you use our Puck, lets you have up to four controllers on one puck with no latency hit, which we're really excited by. But at the end of the day, the latency we're working back from is the core performance of the actual parts in the in the controller.

The Steam Ecosystem

Freedman: I want to ask more about the philosophy of the controller within the Steam ecosystem. The controller only works through Steam, right, on Windows, on macOS, if you're not in Steam, it's seen as a USB mouse. I plugged it into a PlayStation and it's seen as a USB mouse. Why not have it so that it works more widely outside of Steam even if Steam would actually still be the best place to use it?

Griffais:, I guess there's a couple dimensions to that. I guess one thing that I must point out before continuing this answer is that on Linux, we have made a built-in driver that is actually in the Linux kernel that lets you have gamepad functionality without needing Steam running. So it's kind of a baseline level of support. There's no analog to other platforms right now. So like, like you said, on Windows, macOS, or any other computer or computer-shaped object, it's going to be in default operation of, you know, being a USB mouse and keyboard composite device where you can use it to mouse around, to use arrow keys, escape, enter. You know, have basic control over your device there.

But the the main thing to keep in mind is that to be a controller, like a PlayStation controller on PlayStation or an Xbox controller on a Windows PC, you have to go through the driver framework for those controllers, and the licensing program for those controllers. Essentially, if you want to work out of the box as a PlayStation controller, you have to be a PlayStation controller, right? And so there's a bunch of stuff in a Steam controller that is kind of its own thing. And so there's not really a set precedent for having custom controllers with extra inputs that are not just aliasing buttons over standard controllers, or just doing things that don't require, you know, those extra software features to be registered using the standard driver. So then you'd end up in a spot where you have, you know, maybe a button to switch modes, where you're either in PlayStation mode, or you're in the full mode. And then, you know, the burden of trying to, like, the complexity of trying to navigate that and added cost to have those different mode of operations, and the added parts would, we think, not be worth it for the end user there.

That being said, we're pretty happy we're with where the ecosystem is. Adding games to Steam is pretty easy. We keep making it easier and easier on SteamOS, you can just right-click any installed app and say, "add to Steam." And then from that point on, you're good to go. You can assign a custom configuration to it, and it's pretty easy on other operating systems as well. So I think getting the full feature set there is possible on the whole catalog, even non-Steam games and standalone apps outside of Steam. But for sure, it comes with the kind of trade-offs when it comes to first-time setup that you enumerated.

Freedman: One of the first things I felt like I had to do once I had used the Steam Controller in Steam was that I gotta play Fortnite with it. Because that's very famously only available in one place in the PC ecosystem. And I was able to do that, but one of — I think it was one of the joysticks wasn't working as expected. Has there ever been a thought of, like, can we get this working at a baseline on other launchers, or is that just like so far down the pipe, because you can add other games to Steam?

Griffais: It's definitely something we think about, and we get feedback along those lines. I think right now, we are trying to make it as easy as possible to get it working through Steam, including adding other things through Steam. But it's possible, you know, in the future, it's something we'll look at with a different approach there. But I guess we're limited in what we can do with things like core operating system drivers and such, right?

Like Xbox controllers have built-in support within Windows itself. PlayStation controllers have a driver that they work with Microsoft on. So it's, you know, it would be quite a bit of a different method of supporting it to try and go with those ways. I think we'd rather just make it as easy as possible to get it added to Steam so you can benefit from that functionality without needing any sort of kernel driver that would potentially, down the line, cause system instability or things like that.

Like we're really, we're really happy with not having a kernel driver, because it comes with the onus of not messing it up, right? And so right now, the current method of supporting the controller is pretty safe.

Launching before the Steam Machine and Steam Frame

Freedman: The Steam Controller is launching ahead of the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame? How has that changed launch for you? It kind of feels from history that people are used to controllers launching alongside consoles. That there should be a specialized box that it controls. Obviously, it works great on other things. I've used it on a Steam Deck. I've been using it on my rig. But how has that changed the launch and how you're looking at messaging with the controller?

Cardinali: I was gonna say it really hasn't. Because from the get go, the controller wasn't just something we saw as only a Steam Machine controller, right? It is, first and foremost, a PC controller. It's going to work great with your Steam Machine. It's going to work great with your Steam Deck, but on your Windows, or wherever you have Steam, it'll work great as a Steam Controller. And essentially, you know, we had, we had thought at some point maybe they would launch together, depending on how the timing lined up. But it was never a constraint internally that it's something we had to do, because we saw them truly as two separate products that work well together, but they're their own things.

Griffais: We expect a vast majority of users will be on PC, right? There's so many people there that might be in demand for a controller. And so I think that was always our priority from the get-go.

Griffais: You can definitely draw a line between the first Steam Controller and this one in terms of development features and philosophy. Like you said, though, the first Steam Controller was more of a peripheral for PCs to play PC games, whereas this controller is more a normal controller, first and foremost, And then it adds some of the same features that let you play PC games with the first Steam controller. So a lot of it is actually working back from the feedback that we got on the first Steam Controller, where people appreciated the features that let them play their PC games, the mouse controls and all that. But they, instead of, switching between a Steam Controller when they're playing PC-only games and an Xbox controller, they wanted something that did both.

And so when we designed the controls of the Steam Deck, we very much were implementing that feedback and made sure, like we were saying before, to have a standard controller, you know, and with all of its inputs in all the spots that your hand would expect it. And so that was a that was a pretty core design principle there that followed us from the legacy of the first Steam controller. So all the extra features are there, but also, you know, the knowledge of the desire that people just want a device that does all of those things.

Ergonomics

Freedman: One thing that surprises me about this, given how many things are packed into it, how do you work to make it feel good in the hand? I mean, it's very it's ergonomic for what it is. I expected, after an extended period of time, I would find issue with, "oh, you know, you have, the touchpads down here," or, you know, where the back buttons are, anything like that. How do you sort of fit all that into something so ergonomic?

Cardinali: A lot of prototypes, a lot of prototypes. Like, we spent an entire year for this controller just thinking about ergonomics, and how do we take the Steam Deck inputs and put them in a controller in a way that's comfortable, doesn't feel too big in people's hands, especially people with small hands, and feels good in people with big hands, right? A lot of internal testing, we brought in external people to come get their hands on functional prototypes. I mean in terms of functional prototypes, before we even, like, locked the ergonomic design, we probably made 30-plus functional controllers that people could play games with.

Many of them were just different iterations on the trackpad alignment and, like, the direction orientation. The first inception. They were just square, and just like, aligned with the system, like it is in the Steam Deck, versus "clocked and canted," as we lovingly call them now. That took a lot of work to land there and a lot of testing, because with something with this many inputs, you really have to spend time and do the due diligence to make sure that it's going to be comfortable for the majority of people.

Griffais: Yeah, just like the Steam Deck, ergo was pretty much at the top of the priorities list when we're designing things. So things like making sure it's comfortable, definitely above, you know, the cosmetics around it, right? So we got the feedback a ton that Steam Deck looks bulky and uncomfortable, but then once you hold it, it feels great, right? Then, I think that's very much a result of that. Unfortunately, we didn't find a way to make it feel great and also look great. But you know, there's, there's always next one.

Component shortages & tariffs

Freedman: There's been a lot of questions about the rest of the Steam hardware lineup because of things like component shortages and tariffs. How has that affected the Steam Controller? Has that affected the $99 pricing or the timing of its release?

Griffais: Yeah, it has definitely, it's definitely affected it. I think [that] our price reflects the reality of building the product and getting it to customers at the real cost that we can make it with the reality of today's economics and, you know, dynamics. So for sure, there is things like tariffs included, depending on the region and so on.

But that being said, like for something like a controller, the current conditions, with all the memory shortages and all that, don't really affect it that much, it would have been way worse during Covid. Like during Covid, there was a microcontroller shortage, the same kind of microcontrollers that you use in a controller like that. But that's really not a problem right now. So I would say for the controller itself, it's more things like import duties and shipping costs rising because of current conditions that would affect it. So it's not as much as it would, you know, a big PC product with lots of memory in it, but it's definitely affecting it.

Freedman: And you guys definitely have experience shipping PC products during Covid.

Griffais: Unfortunately, yeah. I mean, it seems like whenever we decide to launch a product or some kind of worldwide, global condition trying to prevent us from doing so, but we've been persisting.

Freedman: Given the current situation in which you've built and priced the controller, was there anything — any features — that you had to consider taking out of the controller to make it price-efficient?

Cardinalli: I mean, those conversations happened way earlier on in development of the program, so nothing that kind of came about in the past, call it year, really affected any final feature decision, right? Those were made way earlier.

[Interview ends]

A PC gaming enthusiast and tinkerer has shared a video demo of the new DS5Dongle. As its name suggests, this is a Windows PC dongle for users of the Sony DualSense controller. Its raison d'être is that it allows users of Sony’s well-regarded controller to enjoy wireless connectivity without the lack of adaptive triggers and haptic feedback that this connectivity choice on Windows PCs previously entailed. We would also give bonus points for the low cost (<$20) and purported low latency of this generously MIT-licensed dongle design.

PSA: Since Sony won't make a PC dongle for the DualSense, you can build your own for less than $20 using a Raspberry Pi Pico 2W. Wireless Adaptive Triggers and Haptic Feedback finally work natively. from r/pcmasterrace

The brains behind this project are provided by a developer known as awalol on GitHub, linked above. However, the video and Reddit announcement from SlaveKnightSoman neatly encapsulate the experience of using a DS5Dongle. The Redditor explains that they were attracted to this GitHub project as they had “spent way too much time trying to get the ‘PS5 Experience’ on PC without being tethered by a 3-meter cable.”

There are some technical reasons behind the reduced DualSense features on Windows PCs using wireless connectivity. Windows Bluetooth can’t handle the full non-standard use of Bluetooth bandwidth that Sony leverages to make its controllers work so well on the PS5. In contrast, the full gamut of controller features is available if Windows users use a wired version.

This is where the new DS5Dongle comes in, and it is also succinctly described as a “Pico2W DualSense 5 Bridge” by the developer. In brief, the dongle pairs with the DualSense over Bluetooth, receives the full gamut of haptic, trigger, audio, and other controller data, then exposes itself to its Windows host as a wired DualSense, and neither side is the wiser.

As what might be described as a ‘handshake spoof’ rather than some kind of emulation or translation layer, the latency should stay low. The experience of Redditor SlaveKnightSoman goes a long way to confirming that important factor, and they assert that “I didn't feel any difference to wired. But I only play single player games.” See the Reddit embedded Days Gone gaming footage to help judge for yourself.

DS5Dongle plans, details, and other useful resources are available via GitHub, so you can make your own. SlaveKnightSoman says they built one for under $20, including the cost of the Raspberry Pi Pico 2W, central to the dongle’s functionality. That could be worth it if you feel that the DualSense is one of the best controllers out there.

With gaming handhelds becoming an increasingly popular way to play, many people have gotten used to the Steam Deck's multitude of inputs, including buttons, joysticks, touchpads, back buttons, and gyroscope. But when you go to play at your TV, those controls don't typically come with you.

With the Steam Controller, that's no longer the case. Valve's $99 gamepad loyally recreates the Steam Deck's various ways to play, while also adding a few new features, like drift-free TMR joysticks and a new Grip Sense feature that can tell if you're holding the controller in your hand.

The Controller takes advantage of the deep customization options available in Steam Input, should you want to personalize your controller on a per-game basis. Or you could never touch half the features and use it as a Steam-branded Xbox controller (which only works best on Steam).

Do you need the Steam Controller to play PC games on the couch? Absolutely not. Is it a nice controller offering a ton of variety, especially if you love the Steam Deck? Absolutely yes.

Design and Comfort of the Steam Controller

The Steam Controller looks far chunkier than it feels. At first glance, the addition of touchpads below a jammed-together, Playstation-style layout with symmetrical thumbsticks seems to make for a bulky device. But even in my average-sized (at best) hands, it fit well. All of that heft is in the front, and the long grips prevent you from even touching it in the back.

At 292 grams, or about 0.64 pounds, it's in line with an Xbox Series X/S controller when you include the pair of AA batteries required to power Microsoft's option. It's heavier than the Sony's DualSense for the PS5. The Steam Controller can be a bit weighty, but I never had a problem with it.

Unsurprisingly, the Controller looks and feels like a Steam Deck, largely due to the black matte plastic, similar buttons and D-pad, and the touchpad. The joysticks, which look similar to the ones on the Steam Deck OLED (but not so much the gray ones on the LCD Steam Deck), are superior to the ones on Valve's handhelds in one major way: They use TMR (Tunnel Magnetoresistance), which helps reduce drifting and should make them more accurate.

The layout should be largely familiar to anyone who has used either a Steam Deck or a PlayStation controller. Like the PlayStation DualSense Edge, the sticks are symmetrical. Like the Steam Deck, you get identical buttons and touchpads. Unlike Microsoft and Sony's controllers, the Steam Controller doesn't feature a headphone jack for passthrough audio.

There are a few changes to the Steam Deck formula. For one, the touchpads are slightly angled, to align with the grips on the controller. And while all the Steam Deck's Steam and Quick Access buttons are still here, they're in different places than on the Steam Deck itself. The Steam button is where a more traditional Xbox or PlayStation button is, which makes sense, while the Quick Access button is a slight reach between the touchpads. I've used the Deck a lot, so this messed with my muscle memory the first few times I used the controller.

One huge improvement from the Steam Deck layout is the four back buttons. On the Steam Deck, they're effectively flat and kind of hard to press. Here, they're on the grips and fall naturally in your hands, making them easier and more comfortable to press if you want to use them.

The triggers and bumpers are made of a more plasticky material than the Deck's, similar to the button material. There's a slight click to the triggers, and the bumpers are definitely nicer than your standard Xbox controller.

On top of the controller, there's a USB Type-C port, while there's a small 3-pin connector on the back. These are what you use to charge and connect the controller to your Steam Deck or PC. If you want to use a wired connection, you can just plug the included USB-C to USB-A cable straight into the port. Otherwise, you can plug it into the included Steam Controller Puck.

The Puck serves dual roles: It’s a 2.4 GHz wireless transmitter when attached to the USB cable, and a charging station when you're not playing. If you leave it on your desk, it's extremely easy to attach magnetically to the pins on the back of the controller and charge it. If you prefer a Bluetooth connection, that's also possible by holding B and the right bumper to jump into pairing mode.

The back buttons, TMR joysticks, touchpads, gyroscope and some touch sensitivity, make the Steam Controller more fully featured than a standard Xbox or DualSense controller. For those, you have to move up to more expensive Elite and Edge controllers, respectively, and they still don't match every feature (but have some that the Steam Controller doesn't, like adjustable triggers). More expensive competitors also come with more accessories, including paddle and joystick options, and carrying cases.

This all puts the $99 Steam Controller somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of price and features, before you get into other third-party controllers.

Steam Controller Specifications

Steam Controller Setup and Functionality

Setting up has surprisingly little hand-holding, which I guess fits in with Valve's whole PC gaming ethos. When turning it on (and a few times through the pre-release review process), I was instructed to plug in my controller and/or puck for firmware updates. Other than being told on screen that holding the Steam button could enable Big Picture mode, there's very little training to instruct first-time users on how to use features such as Grip Sense or gyro, which have to be turned on per game.

There's an assumption that if you buy this controller, you're a Steam die-hard and know how to use a controller with the platform.

Steam has a massively detailed controller configurator that can be set up on a per-game basis. Every button, joystick, and even the trackpads are remappable.

But these aren't features unique to the Steam Controller. For instance, a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller on my desk has many of the same features, including changing how the gyrometer works, remapping buttons, calibrating buttons and joysticks, and adjusting rumble.

That's not a knock on the Steam Controller. What it means is that you really just need to be a Steam power user to get the most out of the device, and if you're not, you're going to have to dig through menus, because Valve isn't going to hold your hand. That's the same for other controllers, but with all these features baked in, it would be nice to have an optional tutorial. For what it's worth, Valve mechanical engineer Steve Cardinali told me that the Controller team is working on some Steam Input tutorials, some of which should land "around launch day."

Still, the controller largely "just works," at least in Steam. Most of the games I tried either had their own profiles ready to go (thanks to Valve's work on the Steam Deck), or were able to use one of Steam Input's standard controller profiles to get there without me doing any further work.

The Steam Controller works with systems running Steam, including Windows PCs, Macs, and the Steam Deck. Valve told the press that it "is not compatible with consoles." And indeed, the controller just didn't work on Windows and macOS without going through Valve's launcher. Both just saw the Steam Controller as a mouse, where you could scroll or move the cursors with the touchpads and click with the triggers. For what it's worth, I tried the Steam Controller on a PlayStation 5, and, similar to the Mac and PC, the console saw the Steam Controller as a USB mouse. I could launch a game, but the controller wouldn't work in it afterwards.

You can play non-Steam games on the Steam Controller — you just need to run them through Steam's "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library…" option.

Gaming on the Steam Controller

I played a variety of games with the Steam Controller to get a good feel for it and its myriad functions.

Resident Evil 9, my current game of the moment, felt great. I happened to have been playing a lot of that on the Steam Deck when I can squeeze in some spare time, so it made sense to play it here. And other than the game looking significantly more detailed on my desktop with a discrete GPU, the game felt largely the same to play, a testament to the fact that I find Valve's layouts to be quite comfortable.

I don't love using gyro for shooters, but I actually found it to be quite useful kicking back with some Marvel Snap, which I usually play on a touchscreen. I had to make gyro a bit more sensitive than the defaults, but with that tuned and the escape key mapped to L4, I could use the controller like a remote. In fact, Grip Sense made it so I can have gyro active while holding the controller in two hands, but turn it off between turns by removing a hand. People who use motion controllers for shooting games could probably come up with some extremely creative uses for this.

In SoulCalibur 6, I mapped throws and stances to back buttons to devastate enemies in arcade mode. I tried similar combinations with tricks in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4, but couldn’t get the timing right for a single-button 900.

I didn't use the touchpads a ton. For me, the best use for it is for the on-screen keyboard. But if you play a game like Civilization, it's a great way to move the cursor. They're just not for me when it comes to aiming.

There are games that don't work great. Namely, ones that have their own launchers and won't import into Steam. Fortnite was one big game I tried for this purpose. With some massaging, I got it through the "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library…" flow, but the right joystick wasn't working. Valve recommended changing the desktop behavior for the Steam Deck, with a template designed for keyboard and mouse, and then running the game through Epic Games. I did that, and the controller did work, though I had to use the mouse to navigate menus and keyboard glyphs never changed to match the controller, making it a subpar experience.

In an interview conducted while I was testing out the controller, I asked why Valve doesn't let its controller work more like a standard Xbox controller with launchers other than Steam. I was told that Valve finds it easier to keep control in Steam, rather than working on operating system-level adjustments.

"I think we'd rather just make it as easy as possible to get it added to Steam so you can, you know, benefit from that functionality without needing any sort of kernel driver that would potentially, down the line, cause system instability or things like that," said Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais. "Like, we're really happy with not having a kernel driver, because it comes with the onus of not messing it up, right? And so right now, the current method of supporting the controller is pretty safe."

For the vast majority of games that run through Steam, it worked much better.

Steam Controller Battery Life

The Steam Controller has an 8.39 WHr battery on board. Valve rates it for 35 hours on a charge, unless you use it for tracked gameplay with a Steam Frame (which we couldn't test, as we don't yet know when that will release).

Out of the box defaults include haptics and gyro off. You set those on a game-by-game basis, and having those disabled makes sense because you may not want them anyway. That being said, what you turn on in the games you play could have some effect.

I never hit 35 hours before charging, but even that guess is better than the 5 hours I got out of the DualSense Edge. But if you use the Steam Puck for 2.4 Ghz wireless, as I did in most of my testing, topping up between sessions is so easy you don't even have to think about it.

I've never been a fan of the AA batteries required to run an Xbox controller wirelessly, but I know some folks who swear by them. Like all batteries, eventually this one will start to wear. But with how easy it is to charge, I can deal with that.

Bottom Line

The Steam Controller is a comfortable, fully-featured controller at a sensible price point between basic controllers on the market and their more customizable counterparts. It's a bit weighty, but it's comfortable, and if you love your Steam Deck, you'll feel right at home.

That being said, the Steam Controller really only makes sense if you do the entirety (or at least most) of your gaming on Steam. If you play elsewhere, an Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch Pro controller are cheaper and could work on both Steam and your console of choice. The PS5 controller even has a gyro.

If you are on Steam, the new controller will get you just about every major input possibility you can reasonably expect. It's comfortable, if slightly heavy, and is so easy to recharge with the puck that you may not even need to worry about the claimed 35-hour battery life.The Steam Controller may become more of a must-have as the ecosystem grows, for owners of the Steam Machine and especially the Steam Frame, which will be able to sense the Steam Controller's infrared LEDs. Though again, other controllers will work there.

In a world where you carry the Steam Deck with you and play a Steam Machine at home, I can see the Steam Controller feeling like the perfect way to bridge the gap. It already may if you have a PC hooked up to your TV and run Steam in Big Picture mode. But without the broader ecosystem, the Steam Controller feels like a way to make other devices feel like a Steam Deck. I love the Steam Deck and the way it has combinations of inputs that work across most games, so for me, that's great. If you're happy with other controllers, Valve isn't forcing you to buy this one to get the work it's done on customization. The Steam Controller just happens to be pretty nice.

After months of waiting, Valve has released its first piece of hardware since the Steam Deck OLED: the Steam Controller, a gamepad that takes the versatile mix of inputs from the best handheld gaming PC and lets you play games on your TV using any device that runs Steam.That includes gaming PCs, Macs, Steam Decks, and, one day, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame.

But the Steam Controller is releasing ahead of the latter two devices, and into a market where Xbox controllers dominate gaming on the couch. Even Sony's DualSense controllers have great support on a PC. But, according to Valve, they don't match what you can do on the Steam Deck, and they say people want that.

The Steam Controller came from the fact that Steam Deck users were using their handhelds in a variety of ways, including docking on a TV. Those people couldn't have the same inputs as they do on the Steam Deck. Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais told Tom's Hardware that the controller, and its ability to play all sorts of games designed for a keyboard and mouse on a controller, made for a "logical next step."

Building the Controller

"We got some feedback that while they really appreciated having the same exact experience with respect to the UI and being able to get in and out of their games quickly and all, that docking a Deck meant missing some of the inputs, right?" said Griffais. "And so I think the Steam Controller is a great experience for that. You have all the same inputs that you're familiar with. It's pretty much the exact same layout as the Deck, with a bunch of improvements on it, but also just for, you know, just PC as a whole. "

Among other controllers, like what you get from Xbox and PlayStation, the Steam Controller sits in a sort of middle ground. It has more features than a standard Xbox controller, for instance, but doesn't have the physical customizability — think replaceable thumbsticks and hair-trigger locks — like a more expensive Xbox Elite Controller or PlayStation DualSense Edge.

"We wanted it to be natural," Steve Cardinali, a mechanical engineer on the Controller team, told Tom's Hardware. "You're playing a game on your Steam Deck, and you go sit on your couch, you play it on Controller, it feels similar."

That, he said, kept the feature set largely down to what is on the Steam Deck, minus the addition of Grip Sense, which can detect when you're holding the controller and effectively be used as a virtual button. Cradinali said that was added for the growing number of gyro users in competitive games, who need a tool for "ratcheting," or activating, disabling, or toggling gyro for motion controls.

"That one kind of snuck in there, because we feel like that's an important feature for those kinds of games, he added. "We didn't want to overburden the product with too much additional cost or weight or battery consumption. We wanted it to be a great controller for everybody."

The one other big new feature are the TMR (Tunneling Magnetoresistance) joysticks, which help prevent drift. Griffais said that while they considered that for the Steam Deck, the technology was "nascent." Now, it's more mature.One feature from the Steam Deck is missing from the Controller — a headphone jack, which you can find on other gamepads, letting you chat with your friends from your couch and a wired headset."It's just very, very hard to productize, like in terms of the audio bandwidth and the additional cost and complexity in the system design," Griffais said." I think it's something we evaluated, and then we looked at all these other features and we focused on that instead. No, it's not to say that we don't see the value there. So it's more that it didn't make the cut this time around."

The Controller Puck: Respecting your desk

The Steam Controller comes with a small puck, which serves dual roles as a 2.4 GHz wireless connection and a docking station to charge the system. I'm very used to seeing simple USB dongles or massive USB controller docks. Valve's proprietary connection allows for up to four controllers to be connected to one dock.

According to Cardinalli, it's "a hard thing to ask" people to deal with a dongle (heard, I only have so many USB ports) or a large dock, which takes up a lot of desk space. The combination of the two minimizes the desk space while also easily charging the controller.

"And then it has the added benefit that it has this nice, satisfying little click when you put it over, it snaps into place, Cardinali said. "You don't have to, like, worry about plugging it in."

He also highlighted the community of makers who have built add-ons for the Steam Deck. He fully expects people with 3D printers to build fuller docks, and says that the smaller size doesn't prescribe what kind of designs can be thought up.

Steam Input and the learning curve

If you're expecting Valve to teach you how to use the Controller, think again. Steam will push you to update your Controller and the associated Puck, a 2.4 GHz dongle and charging dock, and advise you to use the Steam button to go into Big Picture mode. After that, you're on your own, and it mostly works like an Xbox controller. There's no game, like Aperture Desk Job, for the Steam Deck, to school you on more advanced features.

The back buttons, gyroscope, and new Grip Sense feature, which detects where you touch the controller, are all built into Steam Input. But as Cardinali pointed out, the main controller features largely work without customization.

"We wanted it to be out of the box, easy to use for people who maybe just want a controller that works like a controller and how they would expect, so that you're seeing that element there, of course," he said. "And a lot of thought went into that process."

"It's really important to us that if you don't want to deal with any of that stuff… that the surface-level experience gets you controller compatibility in games that are meant for controllers without any sort of tinkering," added Griffais. "So the steam input stuff is there if you want it, but we don't want it to be a required element to just experience the baseline functionality there."

The Steam Controller team is working on a series of tutorials on setting up some of those functions, including customizing the touchpads, setting up gyro and other input methods, to get people exposed to Steam Input and its functionality "without being too overwhelming."

Griffais did suggest that there have been conversations within Valve about adapting Aperture Desk Job to the Steam Controller in some fashion, but couldn't guarantee it would happen. The game does feature parts that teach you how to use the Steam Deck's touchscreen and microphone, beyond the otherwise similar controls.

All roads lead to Steam

The Steam Controller is designed for devices that use Steam. It works with Windowsand with Macs, but Steam has to be running. Otherwise, it's seen as a hybrid mouse/keyboard input device. (Even on a PlayStation, it's seen as a mouse. The exception is Linux, where Valve has a driver in the kernel with gamepad functionality).

That's not to say you can't play games purchased outside of Steam — you can add most titles to Steam using the "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library" option.

But wouldn't letting the Controller work out of the box with more devices and without Steam better follow Valve's PC gaming ethos? Griffais said there are other considerations.

"We're limited in what we can do with things like core operating system drivers and such, right?" he said. "Xbox controllers have built-in support within Windows itself. PlayStation controllers have a driver that they work with Microsoft on."

He said that Valve would rather put it all in Steam, to not need a kernel driver, which could potentially add system instability."

We're really happy with not having a kernel driver, because it comes with the onus of not messing it up, right?" he said. "And so right now, the current method of supporting the controller is pretty safe."

Releasing the Steam Controller now

It seems that every time in modern history that Valve tries to release hardware, there's a global issue fighting them. The Steam Deck came out amidst the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Steam Machine and Steam Frame are delayed due to the chip shortage. Though the Steam Controller is releasing separately, today's economics still affected the $99 gamepad.

"Our price reflects the reality of building the product and getting it to customers," Griffais said, adding that tariffs are a factor, depending on the region.

(The Steam Deck will cost $99 in the U.S.; $149 CAD in Canada; €99 in the European Union; £85 in the UK; $149 AUD in Australia; and 419 złoty in Poland.

But the memory shortages, which are affecting Valve's other hardware, like the existing Steam Deck OLED, don't affect the controller as much, he said, adding that "it would have been way worse during Covid" due to the microcontroller shortage at the time.

But today's economics and market dynamics didn't have an effect on the controller as it's shipping.

"I mean, those conversations happened way earlier on in development of the program, so nothing that kind of came about in the past, call it year, really affected any final feature decision, right?" Cardinali said. "Those were made way earlier."

The Steam Controller will be available to add to your Steam Cart on Monday, May 4. For more, see our Steam Controller review.

A Redditor shared their prototype for a true single-handed controller combining the function of a mouse and keyboard in one device. u/Adventurous_Tie_9031, who also called themselves Joe, initially shared their design about a month ago, which they built after losing their right arm in an accident. They discovered that it’s difficult to continue playing games with just a single hand — whether using a mouse and keyboard combo or a traditional controller. Because of this, they decided to take matters into their own hand and created the ERCHAM MK1.

The one-handed gaming controller I designed after losing my right arm just made Top 5 from r/pcmasterrace

The prototype controller is heavily influenced by the Razer Tartarus but is way more than just a single-handed keyboard. It features an optical sensor to function as a mouse, but its keys have been replaced by a fully programmable 28-key keypad, allowing you to assign specific functions to each key. There also appear to be joysticks or thumb-controlled D-pads plus clickable scroll wheels on either side of the controller, allowing for left- and right-handed use without needing any modifications.

This project is a great way to let more people play games and accomplish work comfortably on their computers. Gaming PCs and consoles often require two-handed use, so anyone who has reduced functionality or lost the use of one hand would definitely be disadvantaged. But by combining the keyboard and mouse into a single seamless device, it could allow them to discover or return to gaming. Joe said that the ERCHAM MK1 is specifically created for “amputees, nerve injuries, RSI, stroke survivors, and anyone who struggles with a traditional keyboard and mouse setup.”

Many Redditors showed interest in the project, with the creator saying that their original post reached more than a million views. According to their latest Reddit update, that interest allowed them to hit to reach the fourth place of the Entrepreneur of Impact competition. Should they win the top prize, Joe plans to use the proceeds to “accelerate development and get this project moving faster toward production,” although they also said that they’ll push forward with manufacturing it either way.

Building a gaming peripheral such as this from scratch is already a challenge, but setting up a company to market and sell it will be an even bigger one. Nevertheless, the ERCHAM MK1 already has a potential captured market, especially as most peripheral manufacturers do not sell gaming equipment designed for single-handed users.

A hardware reviewer accidentally broke the embargo for the Steam Controller, revealing its $99 MSRP. The original video has since been taken down from YouTube, but one enthusiast was quick to record the video and share it on X via Streamable. The video is just about four minutes long, with the reviewer saying that the dual trackpads are the standout feature of this controller. They shared the Steam Controller’s price near the end of the video, saying, “It’s not cheap, but it’s only $25 more than a PS5 controller.”

Valve originally announced the Steam Controller in late 2025, alongside the new Steam Machine and Steam Frame VR headset. These were initially slated for an early 2026 launch, but the current chip crisis has forced the company to change the release date from “early 2026” to “first half of 2026” to “this year.” Some enthusiasts are losing hope that the living room PC console will actually arrive because of unreasonable memory prices pushing the cost for the Steam Machine to unreasonable levels. This is especially true as Valve says that it won’t subsidize the hardware, unlike other console makers such as Sony and Nintendo.

It seems that the same is true for the Steam Controller, which is significantly more expensive at $99. By comparison, the basic Xbox Wireless Controller has an MSRP of $64.99, while the DualSense controller for the Sony PlayStation 5 only costs $74.99. Even the Pro Controller for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 are only priced at $79.99 and $89.99 respectively. This makes the Steam Controller one of the more expensive options when it comes to basic controllers, although it’s still half the MSRP of premium options like the Xbox Elite Series 2 and DualSense Edge.

Nevertheless, the dual touchpads on the Steam Controller make it quite a unique controller among the many options available out there. This feature makes it easier to use with a PC-like interface, which is quite useful especially as the Steam Machine is basically just a mini-PC running SteamOS. You can also use it with other operating systems, like Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, although it will never beat the utility of a mouse and keyboard, especially for specific genres like FPS and MOBA.

Valve hasn’t announced an official release date for any of its new hardware yet. Nevertheless, this accidental review video release gives us hope that the Steam devices are arriving sooner, rather than later, and that their prices remain within reasonable range.

A random-tech-things-tuber has answered the question of whether you can play World of Warcraft using peripherals made from processed meat products. Specifically, addison2k conceptualized and built a hot dog-based game controller. This smoky-flavored, tactile, dead-flesh device features a pair of quad-array hot dog silos. As designed, the left weiner quartet controls movement, and the right triggers abilities. It is demonstrated in action in a WoW gaming session demo video, below.

As a little backstory, addison2k admits they previously integrated a solitary hot dog into their gaming as a challenge during a camping/gaming event. However, they felt like they cheated as the solitary sausage was augmented by a gamepad controller…

So, they went back to the drawing board and used a 3D printer to output a pair of quad-hotdog silos, with each dog individually wired. That should probably be enough for a comprehensive meaty controller. It was, almost.

The controller maker’s video then moved on to designing and outputting the hotdog controller. A spot of 3D modeling later, and we see addison2k output a quad-silo base station. There are cutouts in the design for wiring, as no one has invented wireless hot dogs yet. Two of these quad-silos are output using a Bambu Lab A1 3D printer.

After the dogs are wired up addison2k configures the controller(s). As we’ve mentioned above, the maker decided on movement touch controls to the left and actions on the right.

We don’t see any troubleshooting, implying the meat-filled controller worked as intended without a hiccup. At this first flush of success addison2k was clearly excited. “I’m playing WoW entirely with meat,” they gasped.

The hotdog controller was far from flawless, though. Its crazed creator complained about the lack of camera control, for example, and missed a dodging control. Later, at around 2m 40s, addison2k would confess they “had to use the keyboard a few times.” As an explanation, they said that the breaking of their hotdog control vows was due to “my target got stuck on a dead mob, and I don't have a tab bound to a hot dog. Damn it.”

Another drawback mentioned in the video was that the hot dogs started to get warm after playing for a while. We are sure there are worse drawbacks to come if a person were to persist in using a meat-based controller. Nevertheless, the underlying message – that you can live your own dreams – stands firm.

Hotdog controller DIY tips and plans

If you want to follow in the footsteps of addison2k and make your own hotdog controller, the creator said that the sausages chosen were the Oscar Mayer brand. Even more helpfully, they linked some 3D printer source files, available via MakerWorld. On that site, you are also asked to provide feedback if you refine the original design.

Back in 2024, 8BitDo first unveiled its Nintendo 64-inspired wireless controller, aptly named the 8BitDo 64, and began shipping it last year. It was limited to wired and Bluetooth connections, but the company has now launched a new $40 model with 2.4 GHz support. The controller includes a dedicated receiver to enable this, and it also works with the original N64 console. Alongside that, the company has released a standalone Bluetooth version of the stylish receiver to enable wireless gaming on N64 and Windows with any compatible Bluetooth pad.

• 8BitDo 64 2.4G Wireless Controller for Original N64 Console at Amazon
• 8BitDo Bluetooth Retro Receiver for N64 and Windows at Amazon

The receiver has an N64 controller port on one end and a USB-C port on the other so that you can connect it to any modern device, such as your computer or a Nintendo 64. It's made to look like a vintage capsule, featuring the same design as the iconic console, with a red pairing button up front. The receiver can also store profiles exported from the 8BitDo Ultimate software, and it has vibration support.

The controller is simply a re-release; 8BitDo has stripped it of its Bluetooth functionality and replaced it with the 2.4 GHz radio connection. Still, the receiver supports BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), so it's compatible with most of 8BitDo's first-party controllers and third-party controllers that support BLE. A regular Bluetooth connection to other controllers, such as those from Xbox or PlayStation, will also work.

The 8BitDo 64 is modeled after the popular 8BitDo Ultimate and features colored buttons that match the original N64 controller, including an extra A and B button in place of a joystick. These buttons have been meticulously crafted to feel exactly like the original, down to their positioning. Apart from the build quality, the highlight feature is the inclusion of a single hall-effect joystick, which should basically never drift.

The updated 8BitDo 64 with the 2.4 GHz wireless receiver costs $39.99 on Amazon and is available only in Classic Grey for now. The Retro Receiver on its own costs $24.99; both devices start shipping on March 23rd. As mentioned, the receiver included with the 8BitDo 64 in the box does not support Bluetooth and is strictly for a 2.4 GHz connection with the controller, while the one you can buy separately doesn't support 2.4 GHz and works only on BLE.

Retro gaming handheld firm Anbernic has announced the RG G01 controller. This is a tri-mode controller with broad platform compatibility, a built-in IPS screen, and a plethora of desirable performance and control features. The RG G01 separates itself from the pack, though, with its built-in heart rate sensor and integrated smart screen monitoring app.

We consider the heart rate monitoring functionality wedded to the 2.5D curved IPS fully laminated smart screen at its center to be the RG G01’s main attraction. However, at this pre-release stage, details about these functions (and other specs) are still quite vague.

In the video, we can see that the heart rate sensor works by placing touch-monitors in either palm when a user grips the controller. “You can track your heartbeat in real time during intense boss battles, enjoying an unprecedented level of immersion,” says Anbernic in its PR. That monitoring is done on the aforementioned 2.5D screen.

Also in the video, you can see a chart being updated from the RG G01’s built-in app. Through the magic of machine translation, we know the display is relaying details like heart rate over time, and there are user settings for history, heart rate alarms, and more. Surely, the retail version of this controller will allow users to switch UI languages.

We don’t know the resolution of the screen, except that it is teased as being ‘HD’, so it should have decent pixel density, and in the video, on-screen elements look reasonably crisp. With that screen built in, and a modicum of onboard processing power, RAM, and storage, the controller is begging to be modded into a self-contained retro-gaming system. Doom anyone? RG name hints at retro, but the controller seems very modern…

The rest of the specs

With the Anbernic RG G01 special sauce thoroughly discussed, let’s ponder over its more general controller-centric specs. Digging through the Anbernic PR and video, other important specs and features of this controller include its:

• 1,000 Hz polling
• Six-axis gyroscope, affording plenty of scope for fast and intuitive movement control, alongside calibrated triggers, joysticks, and motion sensors
• Purple Kirin’s electro-inductive capacitive joysticks – a hall-effect tech rival with similar no-drift no wear promises – but also claimed to be super precise and immune to magnetic interference.
• Macros for button presses
• Rapid trigger settings with two-stage trigger locks – switching from linear to micro-switch mode
• A tactile D-pad
• Dual pendulum motor haptics
• Tri-mode connectivity (wired, Bluetooth, 2.4G wireless)
• Compatibility with PC, Steam, Linux, Switch, Android, and iOS

Anbernic’s RG G01 is said to be “coming soon,” but we don’t have an availability date, nor pricing information, at the time of writing. You will be able to grab one from the firm’s U.S. eBay store when stock starts to flow. The controller has been shown in Black, white, and yellow livery.

Some folks will go to great lengths, sparing no expense, to raise their gaming sim experience to thrilling new heights. Perhaps the crown prince of such extreme sim build-outs is Chinese enthusiast Blyat, best known among Tom’s Hardware readers for his immersive World of Tanks gaming contraptions and, most recently, a (frankly dangerous) fighter jet rig. Today, Blyat released a video showcasing his wild Tank Simulator 5, which comes with a full-size replica machine gun and cannons, on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili.

You can watch the full video on Bilibili, but, as we can’t embed this Chinese social media format, we have also made a couple of GIF clips for your convenience.

Bylat’s new video is a showcase of sim hardware-enhanced fun inside the free-to-play hit, World of Tanks. The Wargaming-published vehicular combat MMO features an incredible array of tanks, adept at various battlefield tasks. The PC version is closely tied to the mouse and keyboard control that the platform is renowned for. However, this video is all about fun, and doesn’t go into the technical aspects of getting these crazy sim setups working.

The frantic video begins with Bylat driving what might be dubbed a ‘Tactical vehicle’ out of a garage, cannon blazing. It switches to the corresponding on-screen WoT action, where the anti-armor cannon can be seen peppering an enemy tank until it violently explodes.

Next, the scene switches back to inside the garage, and Bylat demos both the armor-piercing canon of his vehicle firing, backed up with our hero standing on the hood with a heavy machine gun. We guess Bylat is annihilating some other tank-foes, seen on the headset he is wearing.

There’s lots of overt humor in the WoT sim video, too. For example, at one stage we see Bylat’s pants fall down due to the incessant recoil of the machine gun. Perhaps funnier is the slapstick moment when, stood in the back of the truck with the machine gun blazing, the large armor piercing cannon swings around to smack our hero in the head – leaving him poleaxed in the back of the truck.

If you enjoy this kind of immersive sillyness, Bylat’s Bilibili channel also recently showcased his Airplane simulator, a Mech simulator with VTOL, and an erm… donkey riding simulator.

Computer scientists led by a team from the University of Bath have revealed an innovation they dub HydroHaptics. They say the new technology enables “expressive, two-way communication,” between the user and a range of devices. The soft malleable HydroHaptic sensor is a natural fit for a deformable computer mouse, gaming, or wearables, reckon the development team. Moreover, intuitive input devices using this tech can offer tactile feedback without impacting their soft, flexible characteristics.

The main image shows a test rig devised by the scientists from Bath, Bristol, and Eindhoven, featuring a HydroHaptic silicone dome. Users can touch, tap, twist, or pinch this to invoke a range of input expressions. “Input from the user is sensed by the system through the object and the user then feels the system’s haptic response through the deformable surface,” explained Professor Jason Alexander, the HydroHaptics research lead at Bath.

Expressive, tactile input devices with good feedback

HydroHaptics was first showcased at the recent ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. A paper published to coincide with the event won an honorable mention award. Central to the soft deformable and tactile proposition were a series of four real-world use-cases, as follows:

• Computer mouse: At the current time, the computer mouse concept takes the form of the protruding soft silicone dome you see in the top image. Tests with this device saw users sculpting digital objects on screen. Meanwhile, "dynamic feedback simulated the material’s stiffness and guided the sculpting process," explains the Bath University blog.
• Joystick: The scientists created a small deformable 3D joystick with HydroHaptics. According to their findings, players enjoyed using this input method which was capable of simulating resistance, tension, or sharp impacts. Of course, it also capably covers the basics of directional input.
• Backpack: Simple but intuitive, this use-case envisions backpack straps with built-in feedback to deliver smart device notifications. A compelling use case is where navigation tools send taps to your shoulder to indicate an upcoming turn. Using this, you can keep your smart device sheathed, and hands free.
• Cushion: The scientists also reckon a cushion with a HydroHaptic pouch inserted could be a simple and intuitive way to control smart home devices, like TVs, heating, lighting, and so on.

How HydroHaptics works

The scientists and researchers behind this project claim to be the first to have delivered "high-fidelity haptic output through a deformable surface without compromising the surface’s softness, flexibility, or input richness." Behind HydroHaptics, as presented by the Bath-led team, is a compact motor and seal liquid-filled soft silicone chamber. The particular "resolution, precision and scale demonstrated by HydroHaptics," are said to make it stand apart from prior efforts.

According to the scientists, HydroHaptics could be market ready in the near future (between one and two years) if investment is forthcoming. However, they admit that the underlying haptic engine could benefit from some refinement, and the mechanism from miniaturization.

Gaming accessory maker Turtle Beach has announced the Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded, a new modular game controller under its Victrix esports brand. Successor to the original Victrix Pro BFG, the new controller builds on the design by Performance Designed Products (PDP), the manufacturer behind the original model which was acquired by Turtle Beach in 2024.

The latest Reloaded model now comes with a reconfigured Fightpad module with improved ergonomics, as well as updated Hall Effect thumb sticks and triggers. The company will be offering it in black and white color variants with a dedicated model for Xbox which is compatible with Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows. An officially licensed PlayStation version will also be available, offering compatibility with the PS5 and PS4 consoles alongside Windows, again.

The modular aspect of the Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded controller allows it to adapt to various genres and play style, including fighting games, first-person shooters, and RPGs. Users can swap between three modules and 11 interchangeable components including various thumb sticks, a selection of D-pads, and thumb stick gates that can attach to the bottom of a joystick or thumb stick limiting the directions in which the stick can move.

The controller also comes with patented 5-stop hall-effect clutch triggers with a Hair-Trigger mode that allows adjustable sensitivity, which makes it suitable for FPS gamers. Additionally, there is a 6-button Fightpad module which features Kailh microswitches that are claimed to deliver tournament-level accuracy.

The included USB Type-A dongle offers low-latency and a range of up to 30-feet, while the 2,000 mAh inbuilt-battery offers up to 20-hours of backup. Alternatively, players can use the included braided USB-C cable for wired operation. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack with Sony 3D Audio support on the PlayStation variant.

The Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded is on sale in the UK and EU regions starting at £179.99 and €199.99 respectively. For customers in the US, the controller is now available for pre-order on Amazon at $209.99, and will officially start shipping on September 28.

Elgato’s iconic 15-button macro pad is now on sale at its lowest price ever on Amazon. The black Stream Deck MK.2 is currently on sale for $109.99 — a 27% discount that will save you $40 during the last day of Prime Day 2025. If you’re after aesthetics and have a white-themed desktop, the version is also down to $119.99, giving you a $30 discount. While many cheaper options have appeared on the market over the years, you still cannot beat the first gadget that brought it into the mainstream.

• Check out all the tech deals in Amazon's Prime Day Sale

The Stream Deck will supercharge your workflow with its customizable macro pad, giving you access to endless possibilities at your fingertips. It works with various apps, including Twitch, OBS, Meld Studio, Discord, YouTube, and more, and you can even customize it to work with whatever app you’re using. You can even use Smart Profiles so that your Stream Deck will change the available buttons, depending on which app is currently open on your Mac or PC.

It’s also a great tool for gamers, as you can set your most commonly used shortcuts on the Stream Deck. That way, you don’t have to memorize the many different shortcut buttons you need to press in the heat of battle — instead, you can just program the Stream Deck depending on the game you’re running and keep everything a keypress away. So, whether you want to quickly open your inventory, cast the most convoluted spell known to the gaming world, or press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, you can do so in a split second with the Stream Deck.

This might seem like an unnecessary accessory for most people, as it only shaves off a few seconds from your workflow. But if you frequently use these shortcuts throughout your day, the seconds you save will eventually stack up and make you more efficient. And it’s not just for people who work with media — even programmers, writers, and the average office worker will find it useful. As for gaming, that split-second advantage you get from the Elgato Stream Deck might mean the difference between losing and winning a match.

If you’re looking to gain an advantage — whether at work or in gaming — the Stream Deck will give you that. However, you have to act fast as this sale is only for Prime Day 2025, which ends today.

We are working hard to find the best computer hardware deals for you this Amazon Prime Day. We cover the hottest deals in real-time at our Best Amazon Prime Day Deals Live page. If you're looking for more savings, check out our Amazon Prime Day deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

You've seen elaborate multi-screen simracing setups. You've seen those weird 3D-printed steering wheel attachments clipped onto gamepad joysticks. You've even seen players attempt precision driving with the binary input of WASD keys in Forza. But what you probably haven't seen—until now—is a real, physical car controlling the virtual one on your screen.

Meet Mr. Yeester (stylized as mryeester), who's just done exactly that. He took a real car, specifically an old Honda hatchback, and hacked into the onboard diagnostics of the vehicle in order to read the data coming from its sensors. Then, using Python libraries and some clever scripting, he managed to register the car’s actual gas pedal as an input device inside an emulator. Here’s how he pulled it off.

Every car made after 1996 (in the U.S.) has an OBD2 port, usually found under the dashboard. It’s a universal diagnostic interface designed to help identify and fix issues with your car. Mechanics and manufacturers use it to pull all sorts of data from various sensors, everything from engine RPM to the gas tank level. Basically, if a sensor monitors it, it can show up here. Of course, Mr. Yeester didn’t use this port for troubleshooting.

Thanks to a simple OBD2-to-USB adapter cable, he tapped into the car’s ECU (electronic control unit) and began logging sensor data directly onto his laptop. One of those sensors tracked the throttle position, directly linked to the gas pedal. However, it's not as easy as just taking this data and mapping it automatically to whatever game you want.

First, you need a Python library called pySerial to read data coming from the car’s sensors. Once the stream is visible, the next step is to identify the specific PID (Parameter ID) for the throttle. This allows you to tap into that particular sensor and write a script that converts the analog signal from the car’s gas pedal into a digital one your computer can understand. Unfortunately, Mr. Yeester didn’t share the exact details about how he achieved this.

Once the script is working and throttle data is being read in real time, the values need to be saved to a JSON file. That file is then monitored by a separate automation tool. In the video, Mr. Yeester used AutoHotkey to create a second script that mimics a physical key press whenever the values in that file change. In his case, he set the script to register a Spacebar input as soon as the "trigger_value" parameter crossed 0.2 inside the JSON.

At the end, just open your emulator of choice and configure the control scheme to map Spacebar as the throttle input. You can do this in pretty much any modern game that supports custom key bindings. Then, simply run the AutoHotkey script and, voilà, your car’s gas pedal becomes your car's gas pedal... in Need for Speed.

As a bonus, in his long-form video on the same project, Mr Yeester even got the steering wheel of his car to function as the steering in-game. He used an old Honda diagnostics tool that gave him access to some hidden sensors, like the steering, which he mapped in a similar way to the throttle inside the Dolphin emulator.

A modder has designed and put together what he reasonably describes as a DIY Steam Controller 2, or Steam Deck Controller. For a further useful twist, electrical engineer TommyB also folded in the appeal of the Nintendo JoyCon-like splittable controller(s) in his recently shared OpenSteamDeckController project.

Some might consider the original Steam Controller to have been ahead of its time. However, in 2025, its control scheme with a prominent pair of trackpads is no longer so alien and undesirable. We have the success of the Steam Deck to thank for that.

Frustrated with the lack of a similar style of controller available for PC gamers who don’t own a Deck, MakerTuber TommyB strode the logical step of a DIY solution.

Ahead of digging into the project, the engineer issues a warning. This project involved a lot of work using “a ton of off-the-shelf parts.” Tom’s Hardware readers aren’t so easily dissuaded, though, and we are sure many of you will want to follow in TommyB’s footsteps, anyway.

Tackling the hardest problem first

Work on the ‘Steam Controller 2’ began with the hardest thing to implement – the trackpads. As mentioned above, many parts are available off-the-shelf, even if you have to use multiple outlets to source all the correct components. There is no way to buy a Steam Controller or Steam Deck trackpad assembly, though. And TommyB didn’t want to cannibalize existing Valve hardware. Need we say, trackpads are a core part required for Steam Controller-style game interaction?

We learn that TommyB’s custom trackpad solution is based on the IQS7211E capacitive touch controller. To get a suitably performant and physically appropriate design for the touchpad component, some work in EasyEDA PCB, circuit design, and simulation software was required. The resulting assembly required the authoring of custom firmware to get everything to work as expected within the controller. The firmware has been shared at the top-linked GitHub repository.

Things get simpler now

Moving onto the less complicated phase of the build, TommyB talks us through all the off-the-shelf parts required to make this new controller. He reassures viewers that no Steam Decks were harmed in the creation of his device (we already know what lengths he went to create a custom trackpad).

That there are readily available replacement Steam Deck shells in lots of colors, ready to be repurposed, made the next steps easier. It is also pleasing that the DIY Steam Controller 2 features Hall Effect controllers – a significant upgrade on those found in many brand-name mainstream controllers.

Anyone who wishes to follow in TommyB’s footsteps can now do so, with full knowledge of this prior tried and trusted project. As well as making sure to watch the above embedded video in full, those interested should head on over to the OpenSteamDeckController GitHub page linked top. There, as well as the titular firmware, you can find the PCB details and schematics, plus the .STL files for the pair of controller connectors – essential 3D printer resources for outputting this design. Some other resources, for the controller PCB and wireless dongle, are yet to be uploaded at the time of writing.

A new Kickstarter project could rekindle fast and responsive light gun gaming fun in your home. Launching soon on the crowdfunding platform is a campaign for the curiously titled G’AIM’E gun controller set, which will come with some of the best gun-toting titles of yesteryear.

Japanese firm Tassei Denki is behind this project and has won the stamp of approval of Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. (global license) to include Time Crisis, Point Blank, and two Steel Gunner titles in their bundles.

The ascendancy of LCD TVs (and monitors) has come with lots of positives, but one of the biggest negatives was felt by light gun gaming enthusiasts. Light gun controllers offered fast, slick, and responsive gun play on CRTs, but the tech didn’t translate to LCDs. Consoles introduced during the LCD era instead used motion controls and/or additional IR sensor bars for gun crosshair positioning.

There have since been some solutions, but they haven’t made it to mainstream. The low-latency G’AIM’E light gun controller, which we first heard about last September, is a self-contained product that promises to make light gun gaming fun again on modern LCDs, and now the campaign is about to launch.

‘Utilizes a high-resolution camera and AI’

Sadly, the newly published Kickstarter ‘launching soon’ page doesn’t provide much technical insight into the new light gun controller.

“The G’AIM’E gun uses our own bespoke technology that utilizes a high-resolution camera and AI; in place of the traditional infrared used in light-guns of the past,” the page explains. The blurb goes on to promise the hardware is capable of “giving you the same intense, time-based action you remember, now playable on modern displays.” We'll point out this is a standalone solution — it doesn't rely on the power of your console, PC, smart TV, or mobile. It's also wired, with a 10-foot (3m) cable, so users won't have to worry about modern gaming issues such as Bluetooth wireless lag.

It is reassuring that Tassei Denki admits that light gun gaming on LCDs has been lacking, until now. However, we would advise potential Kickstarter backers to test out something as nuanced as light gun response before backing. At least check out a demonstration video, and third party reviews of the product. It will be interesting to see experienced users compare how well the hardware performs compared to CRT light gun controllers of old.

Third-party gaming controller and peripherals maker 8BitDo is putting a halt on shipments from its China warehouse to the U.S. In a notice posted on its official online store, the company cited newly introduced U.S. tariffs as the reason for the change. The notice also said that only products stored in its U.S. warehouse would be available for shipment to American customers, while international fulfillment from China was temporarily on hold. The firm has now changed its stance.

The aforementioned notice, blaming U.S. tariffs, was active on the company’s official online store up until yesterday. However, the company updated the notice today. The notice now suggests that the company’s warehouse in China will be shut from 1 to 5 May 2025 due to Labor Day, and customers can expect shipments to resume starting 6 May. There is no mention of what will happen after that date, or of the impact of U.S. tariffs.

The UK Foreign Office has implemented a ban on game controller exports to Russia, reports BBC News. We hope that the ban will at least narrow the options available to Russian drone pilots attacking Ukraine and its people.

The game controller ban isn’t a piece of standalone legislation, rather it is part of a package of 150 or so new trade sanctions that the UK announced earlier this week. Among the freshly banned items are other electronic products and components that might also be repurposed by the Russian military, as well as a broad range of chemicals, machinery, and metals. The UK’s move comes in the wake of a similar ban imposed on Russia by the nations of the EU.

"Gaming consoles will no longer be repurposed to kill in Ukraine," said Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty. "Putin thought he could use British markets to boost his war effort, buying harmless goods and turning them into tools of war - but the UK is exposing and acting on this sinister trade." Doughty signaled that the new sanctions would “degrade Russia's military machine.”

While the games controller ban might have been singled out, we aren’t sure that it will be the most impactful of the new measures from the UK. Look at the inscription or sticker on the reverse of your controller, and it isn’t likely you will see any products ‘Made in the UK.’ Rather, this move should help minimize the re-export of the best games controllers, many of which might pass through the UK’s ports.

Taking a step back, it seems likely that Russia-friendly nations like China will find it easy to fill any latent demand precipitated by the UK’s new measures on game controller exports. Some might therefore look at this particular sanction as a symbolic one. Nevertheless, if the change can impact Putin’s aggression against Ukraine in any way, and save even one life, we can’t criticize the new measure(s).

PC and games console tech used in the Ukraine - Russia war

A research subject has been enjoying complex PC games such as Black Myth: Wukong and Honor of Kings using a “breakthrough” brain-computer interface (BCI) called the Beinao-1. According to a report from ITHome (per machine translation). The responsiveness of the China-developed BCI is claimed to be “approaching the level of normal people using traditional mice.”

The report claims that training can take place about 3x faster than seen with the original Neuralink patient. We haven't been able to unearth the Chinese research to add weight to these boasts, however.

ITHome says that the subject in the Beinao-1 BCI implant trial was a 19-year-old receiving treatment for right frontal lobe epilepsy. Brain Tiger Technology, the Tianqiao Brain Science Research Institute (TCCI), and the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems collaborated on this BCI project.

Logitech is getting into the macro pad game with its new MX Creative Console, facing off against established players like Elgato, Razer, and Cooler Master. The Swiss firm's two-piece device is marketed towards Adobe Creative Cloud users, especially those who spend hours on Photoshop, Premiere Pro, or Lightroom Classic daily. According to Logitech MX General Manager Anatoliy Polyanker (via Business Wire), “The MX Creative Console is designed to help people redefine their workflow, enabling them to work smarter and faster.”

The MX Creative Console has two primary parts — a wired keypad with nine primary LED display keys and two arrow keys for navigating between pages, plus a dial pad that has a massive knob, a jog wheel, and four extra buttons. You can pretty much program all the buttons to suit your particular needs, but the company has worked closely with Adobe so that it will work straight out of the box with apps like Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro.

At $200, the MX Creative Console is quite an expensive device, especially as you can get a Stream Deck starting at just $60. There are also other options in that price range, like the Razer Stream Controller or the Elgato Stream Deck Plus. However, Logitech is the only one of these big-name firms to offer the dial pad and keypad combination, which makes it highly suitable for creatives working with Adobe apps. The other competitors are more focused on live streaming and audio production, so you’ll have to spend a lot of time configuring them to make them suitable for visual creative workflows.

The Cooler Master MasterHUB is the nearest competitor to the MX Creative Console, but the complete modular kit costs double at $399 and it’s still in the Kickstarter stage at the time of writing (although we expect shipments to begin this month). Furthermore, since it’s not explicitly made for Adobe app workflows, you may have to spend a good amount of time discovering how to program the shortcuts for each app.

While this MX Creative Console is perfect for Adobe users, you might find it lacking if you prefer other apps. You’ll have to customize the console yourself if you want to use it with non-Adobe programs, like DaVinci Resolve or GIMP. Alternatively, you could download plugins via the Plugin Marketplace in Logitech Options+ app to make the MX Creative Console work more seamlessly with select apps like Spotify, Capture One, and Zoom. However, you’ll have to wait for Logitech to see if and when it will release plugins for popular Adobe alternatives.

The second human Neuralink implant patient enjoys playing Counter-Strike 2 using his Link brain-computer interface (BCI). Alex, a spinal cord injury patient, only received the implant last month but has been quick to adapt to the benefits the BCI provides, using CAD applications and gaming. Moreover, it is hoped that Link will provide him with greater autonomy via robot arm and wheelchair controls.

The video shows Alex and his CS2 teammates in action, wasting the hapless opposing forces. Before he got the Link implant, Alex dabbled in CS2 using an assistive device called the Quadstick. Neuralink described this controller as “a mouth-operated joystick with sip-and-puff pressure sensors and a lip position sensor for clicking.”

However, playing fast-paced FPS games like CS2 requires at least two joysticks (if going down the controller route)—one for movement and another for crosshair positioning. The Quadstick’s singular joystick thus requires the user to toggle its stick input to switch between movement and targeting, limiting the game’s traditional appeal.

Alex was enthusiastic about the newfound deftness in gaming controls via the BCI. “Just running around is so enjoyable because I can look side to side and not need to move Quadstick left and right… I can [think about where to] look, and it goes where I want it to. It’s insane,” said the second human Neuralink implant study patient.

Beyond the headlining gaming high-jinks, we’ve already mentioned that Alex has been using a CAD program via BCI. As a former automotive technician, Neuralink implant patient No.2 enjoyed working on physical projects. He has already designed a custom mount for his Neuralink charger, which has been 3D printed and integrated into his setup. There’s a video demo of this on the Neuralink blog if you want to check Alex’s interactions. Meanwhile, Neuralink says it is improving Link productivity by mapping intended movements to different mouse clicks (e.g., left, right, middle).

In the latest blog posts, it is also interesting to read about how a human/BCI interaction called ‘thread retraction’ has been reduced for Alex. As you may have guessed, this phenomenon results in reduced BCI performance. Thankfully, this second human test subject had the BCI implant with several proactive mitigations, and the scientists behind this technology assert that they have “observed no thread retraction in our second participant.”

Going forward, Neuralink scientists will continue to improve BCI interaction performance with controllers and computer input devices. Alex seems enthused with what he has experienced thus far. Neuralink, therefore, looks set to improve life quality for those unable to move limbs and could do the same/similar for neurological conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), reckons the team behind this BCI tech.

The first wrongful death lawsuit (PDF) from the Titan submersible implosion in 2023 is underway, and attorneys have pointed out several factors that could have played a role in the tragic accident. Among these contributing factors is the inexpensive Logitech F710 game controller used as the submersible’s only means of navigating the craft.

The estate of Paul-Henri Louis Emile Nargeolet recently filed the lawsuit against OceanGate, Inc., and others. Other defendants include the estate of deceased OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. The lawsuit is requesting damages be paid of at least $50 million.

Nargeolet, known worldwide as “Mr. Titanic” because of his 37 previous dives to the ocean liner wreckage, was working with OceanGate on Titan as a crew member. His responsibilities were to "guide other crewmembers and assist with navigation through the Titanic wreckage.”

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs point out that OceanGate and the other defendants were warned repeatedly by “multiple deep-sea diving experts and engineers, about the potentially fatal consequences of their choices and actions.” These warnings stemmed from serious concerns about the design and construction of the Titan submersible, as well as its operation.

One of the listed design concerns was using the Logitech F710 game controller as the only way to steer the submersible. Rush highlighted this in a 2022 interview with journalist David Pogue, holding up the controller with its 3D-printed thumbstick extensions and boasting, "We run the whole thing with this game controller."

Game controllers are heavily used in military and space flight applications, primarily because newer generations have built up so much muscle memory in using them. However, the decision not to include a secondary, hard-wired means of controlling the Titan was heavily questioned as unsafe before the dive.

Rush, infamously at this point, shrugged off safety concerns. He told Pogue, "At some point, safety just is pure waste." Rush wasn’t just talking about the inclusion of the Logitech F710, but about that and other concerns raised with the Titan’s design. Similarly, the wrongful death suit points out the controller and other factors questioned long before the Titan began its descent to the Titanic wreckage.

These other design and construction choices included building the submersible using carbon fiber instead of titanium, the submersible’s porthole, and the use of materials with differing expansion/compression coefficients. These rounded out the four main areas of criticism Rush and OceanGate ignored.

The lawsuit acknowledges the root cause of the implosion may never be known and does not place sole blame on any one factor. However, the "daisy chain of failures of multiple improperly designed or constructed parts or systems" likely contributed. Now, the plaintiffs seek compensation from OceanGate and the other defendants.

The wrongful death suit claims the defendants "were careless, negligent, grossly negligent, and reckless" because, in part, they failed to provide a safe work environment or "take reasonable precautions during the design, manufacturing, testing, and operation phases" of the Titan.

If your standard controller isn't doing it for you, or you're beginning to encounter wear and tear issues with your current one, then this deal is a great opportunity to refresh your sticks or upgrade. 

There are many options for gaming controllers, and a standard Microsoft Xbox controller is a very popular choice if you're looking for a gamepad that works on both the Xbox console and your PC. With easy compatibility with the Windows OS. The GameSir Kaleid also shares the same compatibility with your Xbox, PC, and Steam integration as it's an Xbox-authorized controller.

As it's the deal season and retailers begin to power up their sales events, Newegg starts the beginning of their Fantastech sales, and offers deals with a price protection guarantee should the item drop further in price later in the sales. You can grab the GameSir Kaleid Xbox-Authorized gaming controller for just $47 from Newegg.

The GameSir Kaleid connects to your console via a USB cable and is instantly recognized on either the Xbox or a Windows PC. It has some gamified aesthetics as the GameSir Kaleid uses a transparent case that lets bright RGB lighting shine through the chassis and illuminate your gaming space. But the real benefit is the Hall Effect switches and joysticks that are used; these magnetic joysticks and switches suffer less wear and tear compared to traditional joysticks and switches and therefore should not only last longer but also remain more accurate. This should help eliminate or reduce common stick-drift failures that have been prevalent in controllers that use joysticks with traditional setups.

Intel has provided a new Bluetooth driver update with several quality-of-life improvements for its wireless cards. Most notably, connectivity improvements have been made where a secondary PlayStation 5 DualSense gaming controller is connected to a single PC — a configuration gamers often use to play co-op games from a PS5 and a gaming PC. Intel has also added Bluetooth QoL improvements after a system comes out of hibernation or sleep mode.

This new update should be very welcome for the many PC gamers who use a dual-sense controller. Since it debuted with the PS5, Sony's latest gaming controller has reportedly had consistent reliability issues regarding its Bluetooth functionality. Numerous user reports on Reddit, Steam, Microsoft forums, and other sites complaining about Bluetooth connectivity issues with these controllers.

The main culprits appear to be range issues and interference from other radio frequencies — such as Wi-Fi. One lengthy Reddit exchange reveals that several different dual-sense gamers are struggling with many problems surrounding Bluetooth connectivity. For some, blocking the controller's line of sight with their legs will severely hamper and cause intermittent connectivity (6FT away from the host system). Another user reports that he can sit 15 feet away from his Xbox Series X and has zero issues with the Microsoft controller. However, sitting more than 5 feet away from his PS5 with the dual sense controller causes immediate problems.

This new update will undoubtedly help alleviate issues for gamers utilizing two of these controllers simultaneously with another player. The interesting tidbit is that Intel's new driver update only improves connectivity when a second dual-sense controller is connected. As a result, this driver update won't help gamers who might be having issues with just a single controller connected to their gaming PC.

The only other improvement Intel has provided in its latest Bluetooth driver update are stability improvements surrounding hibernation and sleep modes. This improvement should help ensure Bluetooth devices re-connect to their host system after the system comes out of hibernation or wakes up from sleep mode.

Intel's new update applies to all its latest wireless controllers, including its Wi-Fi 6 AX101-203 cards, Wi-Fi 6E AX210-411 cards, and Wi-Fi 7 BE200 and BE202 cards.

Steam is looking to encourage PlayStation users to spend more time with its platform by officially embracing PS controller-specific support. The latest Steam patch will now integrate, identify and provide input API for PlayStation DualSense and DualShock controllers, thereby providing the required tools to game developers and information to its users. The patch note further specifies console-specific controller support either as a full or partial integration. 

With this major addition, Valve enabled sorting and filters to highlight games compatible with these controllers via Steam's controller-friendly hub. This also includes a controller configuration button conveniently placed on the play bar. Developers can now specify controller recommendations in their game's respective listings. 

Valve's Interest in PlayStation Users

The common ground between the platforms is the controller. Unlike consoles, the PC platform doesn't have any restrictions to disallow support. It depends on the input API. And Valve felt now was the best time to roll out this integration, as 12% of Steam's active players on its platform regularly use a controller to play its games. It acknowledges many games are played with controllers almost exclusively. One of the oldest games I could think of is Rocket League. But you can include any sports or racing games, certain RPGs and fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken. Because of its vast collection of games and global player base, Steam was able to gather the following data:

• There were over 3 billion game sessions that included a controller in the past year
  • 60% Xbox controller
  • 27% PlayStation models
  • The remaining % is made up of Steam Deck, Switch Pro, and hundreds of other controller models
• The same period four years ago (ending Nov 2019) had 990 Million controller sessions
  • 76% Xbox controllers
  • 19% PlayStation controllers
• During these four years, PlayStation controllers saw a 4x increase in sessions

A combination of official and third-party controllers using XInput and DirectInput gets detected in Steam as an Xbox controller by default. Hence, it is not very shocking to see a 60% share with Xbox controllers. It is still remarkable to see 27% of Steam's user base using PlayStation controllers in 2023 while identifying a noticeable increase since 2019. Steam attributes this to PlayStation 4 and 5 console sales globally, while acknowledging that some of its player base would use Sony's controllers on Steam as a plug-and-play device. Since Valve recognizes the significant use of PlayStation controllers in its platforms, it is only natural to see input API, division and identification of controller-specific games. 

Steam succeeds while Console makers wouldn't tread

While console players would like to take a slice of each other's market share with exclusive game titles and other features, Steam plays on its strong points by providing seamless support on the PC for PlayStation users to alternate with using the same controller. This wouldn't make people replace PlayStation for PC, but will likely result in a more active user base. You'll never see PlayStation or Xbox do this type of cross-integration. While there are unofficial Playstation controllers, notably fight sticks, that use either Brooke Fusion or the open-source GP2040-CE PCBs, Xbox recently put its foot down and disabled third-party controller support, something that didn't go well with many of its users. 

Steam's New Classification for Controller Support

The controller support will now specify 'Full' and 'Partial' controller support differentiating USB and Bluetooth connections for DualSense and DualShock. What this means is that games with full controller support indicate almost all in-game actions and interactions seamlessly. It doesn't necessarily mean it uses every feature on the controller. It is also not certain if gamers will be able to use the audio port via the PlayStation controller, as you'd think it would need Steam to recognize it as a separate audio output somehow. 

A partial controller indicates that some elements may not work even if the controller is seen just fine. As an example, some specific interactions might not work or the game might suggest the wrong key to trigger an in-game action. This wouldn't render your controller completely useless but rather require you to operate with a keyboard and mouse when the situation arises. 

Valve admits this addition is more complicated than Xbox controllers. Hence, Steam is actively encouraging developers to use its input API for all console controllers, including Switch. This will take time, but naturally many developers should eventually integrate either full or partial support for PS controllers with its games. Thanks to Steam's input API, many indie developers will be encouraged to do the same. Seeing these stats, developers should be encouraged to enable all of the console-specific controller functions such as adaptive triggers and haptic feedback for many of its games. If not, the recognition of partial support with PlayStation controllers goes a long way.

While some are surprised that only 12% of Steam gamers use controllers, that's a very large share when you think keyboard and mouse dominate a large section of Steam because of many of its long-running multiplayer titles like Counter-Strike, and now CS2 and Apex Legends.

The Meta Quest and Meta Quest 2 both come with a pair of brilliant Touch controllers that let you feel and interact with the VR world. However, they aren’t always the best and most convenient solution.Fortunately, it’s easy to use a standard game controller in either wired or wired mode with either headset (though Quest 2 is far more common).

Why Use a Controller With Quest 2?

Meta Quest headsets (both versions) let you use your bare hands through the hand-tracking feature, which is great with certain games (e.g. Waltz of the Wizard) that are designed for hand-tracking in particular and media apps or the web browser, where you don’t necessarily want to grab a controller ever few seconds to scroll down a page or pause something.

In addition to Touch controllers and hand tracking, the Meta Quest 2 has native support for traditional controllers or “gamepads”, if you’re old enough to remember the Gravis Gamepad. Why would you want to do this? Well, there are VR games (such as the Tetris Effect or certain racing titles) that simply play better with a controller, and if you can’t use (or don’t like) hand tracking then a standard controller can be a more comfortable away to operate media apps or the web browser, compared to having a touch controller strapped to your wrist. Whatever the reason you want to use a controller, you can do it thanks to Meta’s decision to add this feature to their headsets.

Which Controllers Are Compatible?

Officially, Meta lists “Bluetooth 3.0 Class 2” controllers as compatible. In practice, if you already have a controller there’s no harm in trying it with your Quest to see if it works. However, if you’re looking to buy a controller to use with your Quest, it’s essential to do a web search to see whether it works or not.

Here we’re using a standard Xbox Series X controller for the tutorial, but your mileage may vary if you have something more esoteric.

How to Connect a Gamepad to Your Meta Quest 2 via USB

While we didn’t see it documented anywhere, our Xbox Series X controller has a USB-C port, and our Meta Quest 2 has a USB-C port so, you can see where this is going. It turns out that this totally works, and we could activate menu choices and scroll up and down text pages using the controller by simply plugging it in. We also made sure there were no batteries in the controller, so there was no doubt the magic was happening over the cable. 

All you have to do is plug one end of your USB-C cable into the headset and the other into the controller.

How to Connect a Gamepad to Your Meta Quest 2 via Bluetooth

Connecting your controller via Bluetooth couldn’t be any easier. Before we show you the steps, please note that it’s not possible to provide screenshots of all the menus involved in the procedure, because casting, screenshots, and screen recordings don’t work when Bluetooth pairing is activated. With that said, here are the steps to follow:

1. Put on your Quest Headset. Get into the Quest VR Home environment the same way you usually do.

2. Select Quick Setting. Just select the clock at the left side of the menu bar.

3. Select Settings. You’ll find it at the top right of Quick Settings.

4. Select Devices.

5. Select Bluetooth. This is usually already selected be default in the left sidebar.

6. Select the Pair button. From here on, we’re unable to provide screenshots.

7. Put your controller in pairing mode. This differs from controller to controller, so check its documentation or look it up online.

8. Select Pair a new device.

9. Choose your controller from the list of available devices.

10. Confirm that you want to pair with the controller. 

Now you can use the controller with apps and games that are compatible with it. If you want to know whether a given game or app supports a controller, head over to its store page and if it says “Supports Gamepad,” then you’re good to go.(Image Credit: Tom’s Hardware) 

Microsoft today announced a new, limited-edition version of its iconic Xbox controllers. Built as part of a marketing effort for the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem movie, you might think these controllers used aesthetic references (such as the TMNT's bandanas) to differentiate from the usual Microsoft controller designs. And well, they do -- there are four variations, one for each of the ninjutsu-specialist, anthropomorphized turtles.

But perhaps that's why neither you nor I are controller designers for Xbox: We're just not thinking as... outside of the pizza box as we should. At Microsoft, someone definitely did, as these controllers go further than any others ever dared before: They're actually pizza-scented. It's unclear what type of pizza the scent was derived from (we're hoping they don't include the likely "sewer waft" from the original source material), so your mileage may vary.

According to Microsoft, the scent is produced by a pizza-slice-shaped scent diffuser strapped onto the back of the controller shell (eh). But unfortunately, this is merely a limited-edition run: There are only four of these controllers, and they can only be won by participating in the social media promotion for the film.

As our resident Pi(e)-extraordinaire put it, it's a shame these are just part of a marketing effort and not really for sale -- no amount of dough will get one into our hands. But if you want controllers that smell like pizza, you could of course just take the normal route , order from your favorite pie provider and chow down while you get your game on. If, in the process of adding your personal pizza scent to your own controller, it starts to turn TMNT green, we do suggest wiping it down. No one really wants to know the secret of the ooze. 

Corsair has introduced a new "smart component ecosystem" to make it easier for the DIY crowd to build a new gaming rig. However, even the most seasoned PC-building veterans could use a helping hand regarding cable management and reducing clutter. The company is taking this intervention to the next level with iCue Link, which was announced this week at Computex 2023.

iCue Link uses a new reversible, single-cable system to simplify component hookups and help to reduce the rat's nest of cables that can quickly take over a gaming rig. Each iCue Link-enabled device features an integrated microcontroller that allows bi-directional communications with the System Hub and provides power. This technology will enable fans to have their own temperature sensors that report back, and RGB lighting can be strobed at specific frequencies to make it look like the fans are spinning extremely slowly or in reverse. You can even dial-in individual fan response curves to find that perfect balance between performance and acceptable noise levels.

While the single-cable hookup for individual components is excellent, there's another benefit: devices can be daisy-chained instead of each plugging in individually into the System Hub. As a result, you could connect a case fan to an AIO cooler, with only the latter plugging directly into the System Hub.

The first iCue Link devices, including the QX120 and QX140 RGB fans, will arrive in June. They both feature Magnetic Dome bearings, quad RGB light loops and a digital temperature sensor. The iCue Link family will eventually grow to include an AIO cooler, fans, CPU blocks, GPU blocks and pump/reservoir combos. These products are expected to hit the market during Q3 2023. Going forward, Corsair will further flesh out the iCue Link with additional products into 2024 and beyond. 

While the whole iCue Link ecosystem seems to dramatically simplify the building of PCs overrun with fans and RGB, it also adds to the cost. Even more important — and something that Corsair is keenly aware of — is that it locks you into Corsair's ecosystem.  

On the other hand, Corsair has also announced new fans that don't tie into iCue Link, so they aren't forcing enthusiasts down this path... yet.

Back when I first reviewed the PlayStation 5, I said that the DualSense controller is "packed with features." With the DualSense Edge, Sony has stuffed it with more. Think of it as the Thanksgiving turkey of controllers: it's too much for most people, but it sure is nice.

The DualSense Edge is Sony's first real take on a pro controller. It has dabbled in attachments to add back buttons, sure, but this adds so much more. The DualSense Edge, adds a pair of mappable back paddles, swappable joysticks with alternate cap options, adjustable triggers, a long braided cable,  a carrying case and more.

That all adds up to a $200 PS5 controller — half the price of a PS5 digital edition and $130 more than a usual DualSense controller.

For most people, this is overkill. But for PlayStation diehards and competitive players who want the best option out there, the DualSense Edge may prove to be worth it, as long as you remember to charge the battery regularly. 

Design and Comfort of the DualSense Edge 

The DualSense Edge, when it launched, seemed heavy at 280 grams. The DualSense Edge is heavier, weighing in at 322 grams on our scale as set up out of the case (Sony didn't respond to a request for an official spec sheet). It feels like a luxury item in the hands. 

At first glance, it looks very much like the existing DualSense, but it has a black trackpad and buttons and a shiny, rather than matte, cover around the joysticks. I personally prefer the matte look of the original controller, because this one attracts fingerprints. But I don't think that will bother most people. If you like the way the existing DualSense feels in your hands, the DualSense Edge isn't making any massive changes, and largely feels better; I'll take that trade.

Of course, there are also a few extras. The two function buttons jut out of the bottom, which let you change control scheme profiles mid-game, or to make adjustments to chat volume. The grips on the inside of the controller's grips are rubberized, which adds tremendously to the comfort.

The controller comes in its hard white carrying case, which includes a passthrough port for charging, as well as all of the accessories: two high-dome and two low-dome stick caps (along with the traditional caps that come pre-attached to the controller); four back buttons (two can be used at a time), including two level-style and two half domes; a long braided USB cable; and a special housing to lock the cable to the controller for those who prefer to play in wired mode. There's also a QR code inside the case that serves as a digital instruction manual

One neat design feature is that you can replace the joysticks without any tools. A small release latch on the front of the controller lets you pop the cover off. There are further levers for each joystick module, and then you can simply swap one out and place another in. Sony is selling replacement modules for $19.99 per stick. It's a tacit admission that, yes, joystick drift can be a problem on Sony's controllers. Part of me wishes that Sony changed the design altogether for this controller. But since it didn't, giving the people who are mostly likely to push their controllers hard the ability to swap out the sticks without junking an entire controller seems like a solid repairability compromise.

My first instinct when I opened the DualSense Edge was to attach a tall dome on the right stick, which is great for aiming in competitive shooters, while leaving the standard cap on the left stick. I initially went for the level-style back buttons, but found that the half domes came up perfectly to my middle fingers for easy pressing. 

I have dabbled with these levers throughout my career and often found them to be in the way, so this felt like a great compromise. Of course, I could always switch (and would be especially likely to switch back to a standard joystick layout for other types of games, like adventure or platformers).  There are fewer back buttons than what you get on the Xbox Elite Controller Series 2, which has four, letting you completely replace the face buttons if you so choose.

The shape of the DualSense Edge is so similar to the DualSense that it can fit in the same Playstation-branded charging cradle and connect to the same headsets with a 3.5 mm jack, so don't worry about any other accessories that you own.

DualSense Edge Specifications

DualSense Edge Setup and Functionality

When you first connect your DualSense Edge, the system will prompt you to take a "tour" of the controller, going over its functions. After that, you can start remapping buttons.

Personally, I’m pretty used to the standard PlayStation layout, but this is the important place to change your back paddles. You can have multiple profiles, and then switch between them with the function menu, even mid-game.

You can also make the same changes you make to the standard controller, including adjusting trigger effect intensity, vibration levels and the brightness of the controller’s built-in lights.

Gaming on the DualSense Edge

I felt like I was better at games with the DualSense Edge. I wasn't, but I felt like it. Maybe $200 buys you confidence.
In general, it feels like you're playing PlayStation. But I set the back buttons to key functions, which at least gave me the ideation that I was improving. In Fortnite, I had one set to jump and another set to the build menu, which greatly reduced the amount of time I spent with my hands off of the sticks (of which I used the high dome on the right side for better aiming). For some, this is where the lack of two more back buttons. When I wanted to switch from a weapon to my pickaxe, I still was reaching up to the triangle button.

In Rocket League, I had one trigger set to jump and another set to boost (I prefer the normal sticks for this game but you do you). In that case, the two buttons were enough for me.

My favorite games are narrative driven. In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, I'm pretty used to the standard controller setup. I did try setting the back buttons to different combat maneuvers, and it worked, but I didn't feel that I was getting the same advantage that I did in competitive play. Spider-Man uses the adaptive triggers, and I found that unless I kept the controller at the default trigger setting, the adaptive functionality went away.

Gaming on PC has some intricacies. When I connected this PS5 controller to a PC, Windows recognized the controller as a DualSense Edge, but Steam saw it as a normal PlayStation 5 controller. But when I dug into Doom Eternal, I was surprised to see that the Edge's back buttons were assigned to the last profile I had used on PS5, which let me jump and rush through enemies with ease.

It would be great if Sony could build an app for the Edge, but it's also possible that developers for games (or clients like Steam) could do that and allow for customizations without going to a PC first. As Sony starts putting out more of its games on PC, it should make sure its flagship controller works as well as possible on the platform.

DualSense Edge Battery Life

The bad news here is that the DualSense Edge has shorter battery life than the standard controller. Back in December, Sony told the Verge:

"The DualSense Edge wireless controller’s operating time is moderately shorter than the original DualSense wireless controller because we’ve included many more features within the same form factor and ergonomic design as the original DualSense controller. We wanted to strike a good balance between wireless operating time and delivering robust, high-performance features. Additionally, the longer USB braided cable is also great for competitive players who prefer playing with a wired connection to avoid wireless interference – this option preserves battery life."

In my testing, which included a mix of Fortnite, Rocket League, Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Doom Eternal on the PC side, I got about 5 hours out of the DualSense Edge. You can likely squeeze more of a charge if you change some settings. I used the out of the box defaults, leaving rumble and haptics on, as well as the controller light set to bright. Turning the light down and turning off the feedback may prolong your time between charges.

In general, this isn't great. My DualSense from launch has already lost some capacity, so we'll have to see how this holds up over time. At least the people who care the most can still fit the Edge in a charging cradle to keep it topped up, and there's a convenient velcro charging passthrough at the top of the case.

Bottom Line

It feels great to play on the DualSense Edge. Diehard PlayStation gamers who love competitive games and are wearing out the joysticks on their existing controllers will get some value out of the Edge, as long as they're willing to charge it slightly more often than the standard controller.

For most people, it's hard to recommend a controller that costs more than twice what a regular DualSense commands. You're halfway to another PlayStation. It's not uncommon for pro controllers, though. Microsoft charges $179 for its pro controller.

If you're playing exclusively on PlayStation, this is probably the best pro controller to get. Those who switch between PlayStation and PC will still be able to use it, but not get all of the features on PC at the moment. If you're PC only, an Xbox Elite Series 2 may be better for you, as most games already have Xbox controller support on Windows.

But if you've been waiting for years for an official pro controller for PlayStation and want a luxury feel at the expense of a bit of battery life (and a lot of cash), there's finally a solid gamepad for you. 

This time last year, Alienware and parent company Dell debuted a concept called Nyx, which served as a massive gaming server for your home, letting you play PC games on just about any screen. This year, at CES 2023, Alienware is pushing the vision further with a new wireless controller that the company says will make PC games far more accessible from your couch.

It's a notable change. Last year, Alienware showed off Nyx with a controller built off of its Concept UFO handheld, which we haven't seen since 2020. This year, the controller is new and jam-packed full of tech to make it customizable.

The front looks like a mashup of the Steam Controller and the PlayStation 5's DualSense. The thumbsticks are on the bottom, in classic PlayStation position, while a touchpad is where a traditional directional pad would be located. There are standard A,B, X and Y buttons, as well as left and right bumpers and triggers. An Alienware head logo in the center is a fingerprint reader.

In theory, you could use the controller to log in to specific games or only load your library, not a family member or roommate's. The back of the controller has two "shift" buttons, which could be used to remap all of the buttons on the front, providing tons of potential inputs. (I would be curious to see if Alienware is considering a version with multiple back paddles, like several "Pro" controllers out there.)
 

Unfortunately, while parts of the demo were down during our time with the controller, we still got to try some of its other more interesting features. For example, there are some advanced haptics, which reminded me of the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons and PS5 DualSense, as well as adaptive triggers, like on the PS5 controller.

But there are more tricks, like the "self-adjusting variable resistance thumb sticks,” which you can tighten using an internal motor. The controller also has a pair of scroll wheels on the bottom, which might help navigate through long menus. And all of these features could potentially work with Nyx's ability to split-screen applications.

And of course, there's a ton of RGB, including a light on the bottom, as well as behind the buttons and Alienware logo. Hopefully you can turn that off to preserve battery life. The whole thing charges over USB Type-C.

I found the ergonomics, specifically some flat edges along the bottom, to be a little a little odd to hold, though some colleagues found it more comfortable than I did. I also found the bumpers to be a bit sticky. That may all be beside the point, as Alienware points out in a blog post, "this is a concept, not a product." It's unclear if this controller — or the entire Nyx server concept, will ever come to light.

Alienware's parent company, Dell, is also introducing new ideas for using Nyx in the office, including the possibility of applications being shared on desktop PCs with 3D cameras, whiteboards and VR headsets, though that demo was down during our tour of the company’s press space.

As with Dell's Concept Luna, a repairable laptop that can be recycled or repaired by robots, which also showed twice, Alienware seems to be taking its time with Nyx. We'll see in the long run if it ever becomes something you can have in your home. 

The PlayStation 5's DualSense controller is Sony's best in a long time. It's comfortable, good for large and medium-sized hands, textured and has clicky, responsive buttons. On the PS5, it even offers detailed haptic feedback and triggers with resistance that can adjust based on the game you're playing.

Just because you game on PC doesn't mean that you need to use a keyboard and mouse. Some games make more sense with a controller, or perhaps you just want to kick back on the couch with your PC connected to a television. And you can connect a PS5 controller to your PC.

Microsoft and PlayStation may be rivals in the gaming space, but ultimately, the PS5 controller connects over Bluetooth, so it's pretty easy to connect it to your PC for gaming. With this tutorial, we'll get you connected and help you set up your PS5 controller for use on a PC.

Here's how to connect a PS5 controller to a PC:

Connect a PS5 Controller to PC via Bluetooth or Wire

There are two ways to connect your PS5 controller to a PC. The first way is to use the wire that came with it. Plug the USB Type-C end into the DualSens, like you're going to charge it, but put the USB Type-A end into one of your PC's USB ports. Boom — your controller is connected in wired mode. By PlayStation's definition, this is how you get official support.

The biggest advantage of connecting to a PC this way is that some PC games can use the PS5 controller's haptics, but they typically require a wired connection.

That being said, it's more comfortable to play wirelessly. For that, you need to use Bluetooth. To connect a PS5 controller to a  PC over Bluetooth:

1. Go to Settings > Bluetooth & Devices in Windows.

2. Click "Add device."

3. Choose "Bluetooth."

4. Hold the PS and Share buttons on your PS5 controller until the lighting around the touchpad turns blue and starts to flash quickly. The share button is the one just to the left of the touchpad.

5. Select "Wireless Controller" from the list of Bluetooth devices.

The PS5 controller will connect to your PC, and you'll get a confirmation message indicating that you're ready to go. Some games will recognize the PlayStation's DirectInput drivers and even allow for key remapping. But many require a bit of extra work.

On a Mac? Go to Settings > Bluetooth and press the same buttons on the PS5 controller. macOS Ventura immediately recognizes it as a DualSense controller, rather than something generic.

Setting Up the PS5 Controller in Steam

On Windows, the best way to set up a PS5 controller is to use Steam,  specifically its "Big Picture Mode."

1. Enter Big Picture Mode by going to View > Big Picture or clicking the icon for it in the top-right corner of the Steam Window.

2. From here, you'll be able to move around with the PS5 controller. Go to Settings > Controller Settings.

3. Check "PlayStation Configuration Support." This is especially important because it will let you customize your PS5 controls for Steam games and big picture mode back in the main settings menu.

From here, you can also click "Preferences" to give your controller a name, change rumble options and change its light color. (I like to turn the brightness all the way down to save battery life.)

There's also a "calibrate" option, though you shouldn't need to touch that unless you're having issues with the joysticks or gyros.

Using the PS5 Controller Outside of Steam

Not every game is on Steam, but you can still use Steam's excellent DualSense support for games from other launchers, like the Epic Games Store. From Steam, go to Games > Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library…"  and search for titles you want to use through the Steam Overlay.

Alternatively, you can try other programs. A favorite I've tried is DS4Windows, which takes the inputs from your gamepad and maps them onto a "virtual" one supported in Windows. This route is one to try if you don't want to add games through Steam, or perhaps if you're playing emulated games. 

Some games with button prompts might not have support for the PlayStation 5 controller's buttons. Sometimes, community mods can handle that, but in other cases it might be more helpful to memorize which PS5 buttons correspond to which Xbox controller buttons.

What to Do If You Have Sound Issues

If your sound stops working while using a PS5 controller on a PC, check your audio settings. The PS5 controller has a built-in speaker that sometimes plays sounds during games. It doesn't, however, play nice as a Windows speaker, though your PC may recognize it as one. Be sure to switch back to your speakers, headset or monitor if this happens.

I have only ever had this happen while the PS5 controller is connected with a USB cable.

Sony first took the wraps off the DualSense Edge controller at Gamescom back in August. Now it has released a lot of important controller information, alongside pre-order and availability details and pricing. Key facts relayed by the PlayStation blog today are the full scale of the changes compared to the standard PS5 DualSense design, and that pre-orders will open up a week from today (Tuesday, Oct 26) at $199.99 USD/¥29,980 (including tax)/€239.99/£209.99. The company says hardware will ship from Sony on Thursday, January 26, 2023, and third-party retailers won’t get stock until February 23.

High price aside (which we'll touch on more down below), Sony has really pushed the boat out with the DualSense Edge wireless controller customization, configuration, and modularity options. The device will be hardware configurable right out of the box, with buyers being presented with various choices for stick caps, buttons/levers, and more. Check out the bullet points below for an easy-to-digest summary of what the Sony DualSense Edge wireless controller delivers.

Key features, at a glance:

• Swappable stick caps
• Replaceable stick modules
• Changeable back buttons
• Customizable button mapping
• Trigger stops can be adjusted
• Stick dead zones can be configured
• Stick sensitivity can be tuned
• Adaptive triggers with haptic feedback
• Braided USB connector cable with lockable housing connector
• Quick-swap controller profile sets
• Unified carry, organizer and charging case provided
• Works with PS5 and PC / Steam
• Keeps same comfortable ergonomic design as the standard DualSense controller

Of the above, probably the star attractions are: the reappearance of back buttons (and the swappable button / lever choices here), and the granular adjustments available for trigger and stick movement. Moreover, the haptic feedback features will still be present however you adjust the trigger pull.

PC gamers have a number of options to use the existing PS5 DualSense controller via PC, which should carry over. Using the configuration tools in Steam is a popular option. And as many of the new Sony DualSense Edge wireless controller features are in its configurability and hardware, it doesn’t look like it will need any work to be done to be used on PC. Remember, numerous new console-style game experiences that hit the PC offer DualSense support directly, including the use of its adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. Such titles include Spider-Man, AC Valhalla, Genshin Impact, Death Stranding, F1 2022, and more.

Of course, the controller's price is also a stand-out feature. Standard Sony DualSense wireless controllers, in black or white, are currently available for $70, and are sometimes on sale as low as $60. At about triple this sum, the Sony DualSense Edge wireless controller will be too much for many to feel worthwhile. 

Even with joystick issues being a common problem for aging game controllers, and the easily swappable joystick modules being a quick and accessible repair for the premium controller, it would take years to ‘break even.’ And we don’t yet know how much Sony will charge for replacement stick modules.

Still, with companies selling custom third-party controllers at high prices for years, it's unsurprising that Sony wants to take a crack at that market. I will at least be interesting to see what a first-party premium option can deliver. 

Sony has announced a new controller for the PlayStation 5 that adds a whole new level of customization to the DualSense controller, known as the DualSense Edge. For serious gamers, this might be the controller you've wanted for years. The Edge features several significant upgrades, including control profiles, fully customizable controls, swappable joystick caps, the return of back buttons, and more.

On the surface, the most notable change between the Edge and the vanilla DualSense is the new front cover above the joysticks, which is now painted in a matte black finish, covered by Sony's signature PlayStation logos in a glossy finish, and displayed in a grid pattern. As a result, it is the easiest way to tell if a PS5 controller is the Edge variant or not.

One of the controller's most prominent features is the addition of "Ultra-Customizable Controls," allowing users to remap or deactivate button inputs on all the control surfaces and change the stick sensitivity and dead zones at will. Users can also change the travel distance of each trigger for faster response times.

A new control profile feature also allows users to save multiple control profiles depending on their needs and the game they are playing. Additionally, A dedicated Fn button has been added to the Edge, allowing users to swap control profiles instantaneously in-game, or do other actions such as adjust game volume, check chat, and more.

The stick caps received an upgrade to be user swappable. In addition, users can now choose between standard, high dome, and low dome caps, depending on their preference. Sony also made the physical stick modules replicable when needed, which can be handy if your sticks start to bug out and you need to replace them.

Sony's announcement of the Edge controller also marks the return of the back buttons to PlayStation controllers. Sony began shipping back buttons on the PS4 DualShock controller as an add-on accessory. But Sony neglected to add them to the original DualSense controller when the PS5 launched.

Now, however, Sony has made a comeback, introducing back buttons as a default item on the Edge. Additionally, depending on the user's preference, you can equip the back buttons with half-dome buttons or levers.

Of course, the DualSense Edge has the same features as the original DualSense controller. You won't be losing out on features such as haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, a built-in microphone, and motion controls. The Edge is effectively an upgrade to the current DualSense controller.

Sony will reveal the launch date and additional details in "the months ahead." So we should hopefully know more by early 2023 at the latest. But we suspect Sony will not replace the current DualSense controller with the Edge. Instead, the Edge will serve as an upgrade over the original variant at a higher price.

A fair percentage of Steam PC gamers are keyboard and mouse input devotees. Nevertheless, more choices will always be welcome, and the PC platform is incredibly diverse. This week the Steam Client (Beta) on PCs added another option for gaming controls for Steam gamers: support for Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers.

Nintendo’s detachable controllers for the original (not Lite) Switch form factor are interesting as they can work individually or in unison. Nicely for PC gamers, the latest Steam beta can handle this configuration choice. So, if you have a Switch in the house and no PC joypad, you now have access to two of the miniature controllers or a more fully featured mini gamepad. This addition could be quite a boon for your living room PC while running a party game.

However, the Nintendo Switch bundled controllers are not without their flaws. The most obvious issue for grown-up gamers would be poor ergonomics. The Joy-Cons used separately might be OK for a quick 15-minute jaunt in a casual game but probably not for any extended sessions. Even joined together in a joypad form factor, the Joy-Cons aren’t as ergonomic as heavily iterated controller designs from Microsoft or Sony, for example.

Another aspect of the Nintendo Joy-Cons that isn't great is the issue of reliability and their susceptibility to degrading through normal use. Nintendo has been dragged through the courts due to Joy-Con issues, most notably 'stick drift.' Other controllers with mushroom-like thumb sticks have seen similar issues, including those built into the Steam Deck.

If you are interested in using your Nintendo Joy-Cons in Steam and don't want to wait until support is added to the mainstream client, you can sign up for beta updates in your client settings today. To do this, at the top left of the client window, click Steam > Settings > Account. Near the bottom right of the window, you will see the option for 'Beta participation.' Meanwhile, those who are already Steam Beta users can connect to the Joy-Cons via Bluetooth and configure them in Steam via Steam > Settings > Controller > General Controller Settings.

If you are using Nintendo Online Classic controllers, you will also find that support has improved in the August 4 published beta. These are simple replicas of controllers once bundled with the NES, SNES and N64 consoles of old but are wirelessly compatible with the Switch (and Steam). 

Loupedeck has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign for its latest creator control pad, the Loupedeck Live S. The Loupedeck Live S directly competes with the popular Elgato Stream Deck in size, functionality, and pricing, and also has some additional attractive features.

The Elgato Stream Deck MK.2, which currently costs $150 on Amazon, has 15 customizable keys...and that's it.

Straight off the bat you can see the new Loupedeck Live S offers the same array of 15 customizable touch zones, but it has flanked them with tactile buttons and dials. On the left, there are two tactile dials and a tactile button, and on the right there's a trio of tactile buttons. And those tactile buttons aren't just plastic blanks, they're color-codable with built-in RGB lighting.

In its Indiegogo blurb, Loupedeck describes its new offering as perfect for streamers who need to "control the entirety" of their streams from "one easy-to-use interface." Loupedeck highlights the ease and intuit of using dials to control volume levels alongside fast, configurable touch controls.

Software support is important for getting the best out of any control deck: According to Loupedeck, the Live S is ready to work with many popular streaming apps, including Twitch, OBS Studio, Streamlabs, Ecamm, Spotify, Philips Hue, and Voicemod. For content creators, the Live S also includes plugins for apps like Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Audition, and Final Cut Pro. In our Stream Deck review we noted that Adobe app integration was a winning feature for the Loupedeck lineup.

Loupedeck's PC and Mac software claims to offer users "unlimited customization," and there are indeed lots of options. You can customize the display with static or animated icons, and have up to 14 pages of these ready to swipe through. Moreover, screens can be context dependent and switch when you use different apps. You can easily download more plugins, profiles, and icon packs from the Loupedesk marketplace.

The Loupedeck Live S went live on Indiegogo today, and the developers are already one-third of the way funded. As always, it's important to note that Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform, and no product is actually guaranteed; treat any money toward crowdfunding campaigns like investments, not purchases. That said, the developers say the Live S will start shipping in October.

At the time of writing there are still Early Bird options listed at €119 / £101, which is about $127 (the first 100 units at a better price have sold out). Loupedesk says that the retail price of the Live S will be $179 if you want to wait until it's officially released.

There are larger, more varied, and more expensive control panels available if something like the Loupedeck Live S or the Stream Deck don't offer enough features for your needs. And, of course, Raspberry Pi aficionados can ignore these pre-made controllers and build an alternative.

To the outside world, PC users might seem like sticks in the mud, hanging on to their keyboards and mice, eschewing endless attempts to usurp the classic input combo over the years. Input innovations like trackballs, touchpads, trackpoints, joysticks, analog controllers, and more have come along but oftentimes they just aren't as fast and intuitive as the best gaming keyboards and gaming mice. Today we have news of another contender, with the gall to suggest it has a way to improve your PC gaming. However, the Wraek Tactonic Pro palm controller doesn't seek to replace your keyboard and mouse; it is an enhancement to this traditional but hard-to-beat pairing.

To explain the Wraek Tactonic Pro in a single sentence, one could describe it as a pressure sensitive thumbstick controller in a palm rest. The video above will give you a good idea of its intended use in FPS (character direction) and MOBA (camera panning) gaming. In its promotional blurb, Wraek also claims the device is good for productivity - moving along a timeline, scrolling, or panning 3D model views, for example.

In its headlining use, controlling character movement in FPS games, users should benefit from the following key changes to control:

• The Tactonic Pro enables 360 degrees of movement,
• Analog pressure sensing translates to varying movement speeds depending on pressure, if you wish,
• Your WASD key bindings can be changed to other useful keys which might not have been so comfortable to reach previously,
• Wraek claims that Tactonic Pro users can outcompete traditional keyboard and mouse combo users thanks to faster reactions and making use of the freed up WASD keys for other common commands.

Now you get the idea of the Wraek Tactonic Pro, perhaps it is time to look at the hardware implementation. The first thing to comment upon is that Wraek has designed a TKL-length wrist rest with the padded pressure sensitive segment in the area that falls naturally under the position of the left hand poised for WASD action. To the right of the "mirror finished" malleable pad is a firmer section spanning of a TKL keyboard (360mm). There is no other length available at this time, despite the trend in 60% keyboards for gaming, and the huge number of full sized keyboards out there. Last but not least, the sensitive pad has four corners with RGB LEDs.

For those without a preferred TKL keyboard at this time, Wraek appears to be very keen to get sales of its Tactonic Keyboard off the back of potential Tactonic Pro sales. In brief, it seems a decent enough gaming keyboard based on Gateron switches (choose red, blue or brown), factory lubed stabilizers, double shot PBT keycaps, 100% anti-ghosting and zero delay with Real Time One (RTO) analog technology, RGB backlighting, triple rake angle adjustment, and USB-C with cable routing.

Wraek's software for Windows Mac and Linux also deserves a mention. This free tool allows you to create and switch profiles for your Wraek devices. With respect to the Tactonic Pro pad it allows you to set pressure sensitivity, deadzones, minimum value, ramp, map keys, add up to 16 directional settings, toggle between key and thumbstick modes, and choose lighting effects.

Wraek launched its Kickstarter to provide funding for its Tactonic Pro project a week ago, and we are now happy to report that it is comfortably over the line with regard to funding. If you are interested enough to get on board there are still slots available in the Early Bird program for the palm rest controller at $85, and the keyboard for $109, or you can get them both in a deal for $185.

Remember that backing a crowd funded campaign is not making a retail purchase. You are backing the project because you believe in it and wish to add your support to make it a reality.

Elgato has released the Stream Deck Pedal. This new tactile foot controller, with three hit zones, expands the Stream Deck range in an unexpected but welcome direction. Elgato demonstrates the Stream Deck Pedal in gaming, streaming, productivity, and hobby activities. As you might imagine, there are many foot control possibilities, and the software facilitates the use of a wide range of the usual Stream Deck functions, plus Multi Actions and Smart Profiles.

Sometimes a touch or button interface at hand level isn't the quickest and most intuitive thing for computer users. This is especially the case for those whose hands can already be very busy with a mouse, keyboard, etc., which makes using a foot controller very attractive.

Elgato's Stream Deck Pedal is pretty unadventurous, hardware-wise. The product maker says all the right things about the controller's heavy-duty construction, anti-skid feet, interchangeable pedal pressure springs, and grippy top surface, but in summary, it is just a trio of pedals in a line. The pedals aren't even analog (like a wah or volume pedal); they are simple switches.

However, simplicity is not a bad quality for something that you might operate with a big boot while out of sight. Furthermore, Elgato's experience and foundational work on button interfaces means that it has many smart features that make the Stream Deck Pedal useful in a wide range of situations.

Elgato highlights the usefulness of its new pedal in streaming content creation, gaming actions/shortcuts, presentation making, video editing, and working with the new Stream Deck Discord plugin for mute/talk/deafen and more. In addition, there are over 100 Stream Deck plugins available online to make your new foot controller very flexible.

Multi Actions can be used to string button press actions together and assign them to one pedal. You can stomp down to grab a screenshot, open a destination folder, and share it on Twitter, for example. Other tasks might be to smooth your audio or video production workflow.

Smart Profiles help alleviate the three-button limit here. Using the setup software, you can easily create, save and recall pedal layouts mixing single and Multi Actions. You might create Smart Profiles and Multi Action sets for different tasks you do on your computer – one for live streaming, and another for video conferencing, for example.

It is recommended you watch the intro and overview video for the new Elgato Stream Deck Pedal above to get a good feel for its capabilities.

The device measures 244 x 175 x 49 mm / 9.6 x 6.9 x 1.9 inches, weighs 930 g / 2.1 lbs, comes with four pedal spring tension sets, and connects to your computer via a USB Type-C port (with a USB Type-C to USB Type-A connector cable in the box).

Elgato is selling the Steam Deck Pedal today via the official product page linked in the intro for $89.99.

Monoprice has a reputation as a value powerhouse in gaming, with its Dark Matter lineup of accessories and monitors offering gear that looks premium and performs nearly as well as what more expensive brands offer without costing nearly as much. Think of it as the universal store brand…store, great for getting the best gaming keyboards and best gaming mice you can find on a budget. 

At this year’s CES, the company announced it’s expanding into more niche gear like racing wheels, flight sticks and arcade sticks. With affordable pricing, here's hoping this new gear injects some much-needed pricing competition into these oftentimes expensive markets.

The Monoprice Dark Matter Pro Racing Wheel is an all-inclusive kit, with a 10 inch, 900 degree rotation steering wheel, 3 foot paddles and a stick shift with realistic detailing. Everything has a muted black and silver color scheme, and the steering wheel comes with rubber grips, a D-Pad and your typical remappable controller buttons. It’s also got rumble vibration powered by dual-motors, and both the stick shift and steering wheel can be clamped to a desk or stand for greater stability. You’ve also got multi-platform support here, so you won’t be limited to either the PC or just one console.

To go with the wheel, Monoprice also has the GT Foldable Racing Wheel Stand for mounting parts of your sim rig to. This will obviously require a bit of space when fully opened, but it does fold away for easy storage. When fully stretched out, it’s 24.5 x 33 x 32.3 inches large, although it does adjust to give you more detailed customization. Perhaps you don’t need full tilt for your purposes, or you want to mount your steering wheel higher or lower than usual. You can do that here.

Finally on the racing front, there’s the GT Triple Monitor Racing Mount, which can hold three flat or curved monitors in a semicircle around your head for greater cockpit-style immersion.

Despite racing being in its name, you could also use that accessory in tandem with Monoprice’s new Dark Matter Flight Stick, which has 4 axis control, a D-Pad (or HAT) and 12 action buttons. One of those 4 axes of control comes from being able to rotate the stick itself, with another coming in the form of a slider that controls throttle speed.

If you’re not in the sim space, Monoprice still has a specialty controller for you in the form of the Dark Matter Arcade Fighting Stick. This uses Sanwa Denshi buttons alongside a Sanwa Denshi stick, both of which have strong reputations in the fighting game community. The frame is made from an aluminum alloy and the panel is acrylic, with two available designs. Also, if you don’t like the included parts, you can swap the buttons out for your own down the line.

All of the above accessories are set to launch in Q1 of this year. Monoprice told us that the Pro Racing Wheel will cost $149, which will again net you the wheel, the pedals and the stick shift, keeping in line with the company's reputation for value. The flight stick will cost $39, while the arcade stick will cost $139. The most expensive piece of gear in this piece will be the triple monitor mount, at $199, while the foldable racing wheel stand will come in towards the cheaper end at $79.

Sony is one of the companies that does not hesitate to use proprietary technologies and standards if it needs to. It appears that, to improve the storage subsystem of its PlayStation 5 console, the company had to ask a third-party for help. But a big question is whether storage technology developed for the PlayStation 5 can be used for other hardware too.

The latest game consoles from Microsoft and Sony have very efficient yet relatively inexpensive storage subsystems. Microsoft's Xbox Series X or S SSD was developed by Phison and supports the company's DirectStorage application programming interface (API) to save CPU cycles and NVMe protocol overhead. By contrast, Sony's PlayStation 5 uses a special compression algorithm to reduce file sizes and increase efficiency. While Sony's compression technology might be proprietary, it looks like Sony asked Marvell to develop it an SSD controller. 

Fritzchens Fritz, a well-known researcher of chips with access to a scanning electron microscope has published die shots of Sony's PlayStation 5 system-on-chip developed by AMD and containing IP from various companies, including Sony and AMD, and, Sony's CXD90062GG SSD controller that was apparently created by Marvell Technology.  

The die shots of Sony's PS5 SoC clearly show the Marvell Titania 2 marking which reveals that the part was designed back in 2018. Marvell's website does not mention any Titania-branded SSD controllers, so we can speculate that the controller was designed either specifically for embedded applications or specifically for Sony. 

Sony's PlayStation 5 uses the company's Kraken compression algorithm to reduce game file sizes by as much as 60% and increase performance and efficiency of the whole storage subsystem. Since the PS5's SSD controller can seamlessly decompress data, usage of the technology does not slowdown performance, but is actually meant to increase it. What is unclear is whether Kraken was designed by Sony internally or by Marvell for Sony.  

If Kraken was developed by Sony, it will indeed remain a proprietary technology exclusively used for PlayStation 5 and other products from the company. But if the algorithm was designed by Marvell, then at some point, it may end up in Marvell's SSD controllers for other applications and provide similar benefits. For example, Microsoft's DirectStorage co-developed by Microsoft and Phison will be supported by PCs running Windows 10 and Windows 11. 

Marvell and Sony did not comment on the story, so we have no idea whether algorithms and technologies designed for PS5 will ever be used elsewhere, but at least we do know that the controller used by the console was developed by Marvell. 

When the universe came to light, first there was the KFConsole - a finger lickin' good gaming console built around PC hardware that featured its own chicken chamber. The world is still reeling from that particular design - and it seems that McDonald's has also looked at gaming hardware as a way to increase its popularity amongst the gaming crowds. As spotted by IGN, the McDonald's PS5 controller, designed by McDonald's Australia in celebration of its 50th anniversary, might've been one such design idea from the company. 

The PS5 controller was set to be a limited edition, available via a give away promotion, but in an update to the original IGN story it seems that the design was an internal concept and never meant for for media. McDonald's Australia says the design was scrapped in the product development stage. McDonald's Australia told Australian website Press Start that "Sony PlayStation has not authorised the use of its controller in promotional materials related to the proposed Stream Week event and we apologise for any inconvenience caused. McDonald's Stream Week has been postponed and Sony PlayStation controllers will not be included in the giveaway." 

The design was actually meant to enter production, where 50 of these controllers were to be distributed throughout McDonald's Stream Week - an event in which Twitch streamers would be giving away the McDonald's controller, alongside hoodies  and channel subscriptions. Only the PS5 controller was scrapped from the original planning. And well - so long. We never really knew you, but we don't think we wanted to, anyway.

The Xbox Design Lab, which allows gamers to design their own controllers, is back online. While it had previously been using the Xbox One controller, the new Design Lab is based on the Xbox Series X and Series S controllers.

Currently, you can place orders in the United States, Canada and "most" western European countries. Controllers are $69.99 (a $10 add-on to MSRP for store-bought controllers), and an additional $9.99 if you choose to get optional engraving. Controllers are delivered with two weeks of orders being placed.

There are eighteen colors, some of which are seen in existing controllers. Pulse Red, Electric Volt and Shock Blue are new to the Design Lab but are also available on the market without the customizations.

Microsoft is also adding a black-on-color ABXY button option, which harkens a bit back to the original Xbox and Xbox 360 controllers, and black-on-white view, menu and share buttons.

Xbox controllers work not only with Microsoft's consoles, but are also widely considered the best option for PC gaming, as most publishers use Xbox buttons in games by default.

Microsoft had paused the Design Lab back in October as it transitioned to the new consoles. This announcement was made during a post-E3 extended briefing.

PlayStation 5 owners might have to deal with a lot of drift in the future—and not the kind racing game enthusiasts might enjoy. An iFixIt teardown revealed Friday that the DualSense controller’s analog sticks might only work properly for a few months. After that, well, it’s going to be a whole lot harder to actually play games on a PS5.

Sony crammed a lot of interesting things into the DualSense controller. The standout features are improved haptic feedback courtesy of two separate actuators and adaptive triggers that offer dynamic resistance based on what’s happening in-game. It also has a built-in microphone, motion controls, and the DualShock 4’s touchpad.

All of those features made the DualSense a compelling part of the PS5’s launch; we lauded the controller in our console review. The problem is that some of the lucky few who actually managed to buy a PS5 reported issues with drift affecting the DualSense’s analog sticks, which is now the subject of a class-action lawsuit.

So what is drift? From a player experience perspective, it’s what happens when a controller doesn’t send the correct input. This can result in characters moving even if the player isn’t touching the analog stick, make it impossible to manage an in-game camera, and lead to feeling like the controller is actively sabotaging the player.

That’s a problem for any controller. It’s an even bigger problem for a controller that accompanies a perennially sold-out console for which people have paid thousands of dollars. According to iFixIt, however, the DualSense’s drift problems shouldn’t come as a surprise because Sony used hardware known to have durability issues.

iFixIt’s teardown revealed that the DualSense analog sticks rely on the same Alps-manufactured joystick mechanism used in the DualShock 4, Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, and numerous Xbox One gamepads. The mechanism’s potentiometers have an expected lifespan of 2 million cycles. That sounds like a lot, but it’s not.

iFixIt explained:

“One of our teardown engineers measured their own Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) controller interactions for back-of-the-envelope joystick life math. Averaging ten different 30-second intervals, they made roughly 100 full potentiometer rotations per minute. If you play a less stick-intensive game than a first-person shooter, rotating 80 times per minute, you’ll hit 2,000,000 rotations in 25,000 minutes, or 417 hours—that’s just 209 days, playing 2 hours per day. At a more kinetic 120 rotations per minute, that’s 139 days at 2 hours per day. So Alps’ own rating for accurate joystick measurements is, in one gamer’s hypothetical experience, 4-7 months—and that’s with a very non-pandemic 2-hour cap on your game time.”

The report noted that every potentiometer would be different, however, which means it can be hard to predict when it will lead to drift. Some folks will never encounter the problem. That’s great! It’s far more likely that most people will have at least some drift just a few months after buying a PS5, though, and that’s a lot less great.

Valve's Steam Controller landed way back in 2013, but it was never a great success. Years later, Valve killed it off and sold old inventory for just $5 apiece, but it seems a failed product isn't the only pain Valve is suffering over it. In a court case held in the District Court for the Western District of Washington, the jury voted in favor of Corsair, ordering Valve to pay $4 million in damages over the Steam Controller. 

Long story short, in designing and producing the Steam Controller, Valve knowingly infringed on patents that were the property of Ironburg Inventions, a sub-firm of SCUF. Ironburg Inventions warned Valve about this in 2014, but Valve continued to sell the Steam controller, a total of 1.6-million units, before hitting the kill switch.

Corsair acquired SCUF in 2019 and picked up the fight. The culprit: the rear-facing side controls. Valve could have avoided all this by licensing the technology from SCUF, just like Microsoft has for select Xbox controllers, including the Xbox Elite controller.

Corsair posted the following statement:

Corsair Gaming, a leading global provider and innovator of high-performance gear for gamers and content creators and its subsidiaries Scuf Gaming and Ironburg Inventions Ltd., announce that on February 1, 2021 in the patent infringement case, Ironburg Inventions Ltd. v. Valve Corp, US District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle the jury unanimously found that Valve Corp infringed Ironburg’s 8,641,525 controller patent and awarded Ironburg over $4 million. In addition, the jury unanimously found willful infringement by Valve Corp. The jury verdict of willful infringement is the first step to a potential award of enhanced damages up to the statutory limit of treble damages.

This fine comes in just weeks after Valve, and a select handful of other publishers, were also fined €7.8-million ($9.4 million USD) by the European Commission for geo-blocking game activations. 

Sony has released an official Linux driver for its PlayStation 5 DualSense controller. The driver allows using the controller to play Linux games, which is good news for Linux gaming enthusiasts.  

The new Linux kernel driver fully supports Sony's PlayStation 5 DualSense controller's key functionality, including the gamepad, touchpad, and motion-sensing both in USB and Bluetooth modes, reports Phoronix. At the same time, the driver doesn't yet support the advanced capabilities of the new controller, such as Adaptive Triggers and the VCM-based haptics. 

Sony's PlayStation consoles have long been known to be Linux friendly, and for years activist Linux users installed this operating system on their PlayStation machines. Therefore, it is not surprising that the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller is now supported by Linux. It will take some time before someone installs Linux on PS5, but enabling the controller supports the first step.    

For Linux gamers, added support for PlayStation 5 DualSense controller means that they can use it for gaming and expect Sony to make other PS5 peripherals compatible with the platform. 

Update, 11/18/2020 6:20pm PT: A recent Steam beta client update has added basic support for Sony's Playstation 5 DualSense controller. In our original story below, we went hands-on with an updated Steam Beta Client with native DualSense support. Since then, a newer beta client has been released and has added LED, trackpad, gyro, and rumble support.  

As you can see in the video above, with this newest update, the DualSense went from being barely supported to having nearly all of its functionality enabled for use in Steam. Now PC gamers can adjust several settings for the DualSense controller. The controller is no longer recognized as a DualShock 4 controller and is now seen as a DualSense controller, and the beta also adds a revamped calibration system.

However, it does appear that the rumble capability is only available if you connect a USB Type-C cable to the controller. Attempting to use it via Bluetooth, I noticed that the rumble function was not working. This is just the second beta in less than a week, so I’m sure Valve will get that issue sorted out.

Now all that’s left is to add haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.  

Original Story:

One of the first questions I asked when Sony revealed its newest gaming controller for the PlayStation 5 was would it include native Windows/PC support? I eventually found out that the answer to that was no. Fast forward to the official release of the DualSense controller. I had one shipped to me, and the first thing I did was connect it to my Windows 10 PC via USB Type-C cable and Bluetooth. While the controller was recognized and usable to an extent, it was clear that the controller wasn't natively supported. With no official word from Sony, there was no telling if or when we'd see any support for the DualSense when it came to PC gaming.

Thankfully, as with most things with PC gaming, there's always a workaround or someone out there working on a solution. It turns out that for the DualSense controller, solutions are being worked on.

The first one comes via a recent Steam beta client update that has enabled preliminary support. This is just the first initial push of getting DualSense support added. It lacks many advanced features, such as Trackpad, Rumble, and Gyro functionality, but it works.

Upon hearing about the Steam beta, I downloaded it, restarted Steam, and plugged in my DualSense controller. Sure enough, it was recognized... but as a PlayStation 4 controller. Taking a look over that the Steam Community Forums, that is the expected result. Everything looked to be in order, so I gave it a try in several games, including Streets of Rage 4, Tekken 7, Mortal Kombat 11, and Yakuza Like a Dragon. All of which worked, though without rumble support.

The fact that Valve has already added this to Steam is a godsend. And while Valve is no longer supporting its own gaming controller, it's nice to see that it's made it a mission to support just about any and every gaming controller that can be connected to a PC. I fully expect Valve to get every function of the DualSense working with the Steam client, just as they did with the DualShock 4 controller.

While of course only time will tell, it feels like it's just a matter of time before Steam gets almost all the features enabled -- outside of the haptic feedback, which would need in-game programming to work.