GoKawiilWhen 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.
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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.
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
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?
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