FUCK. SAM. ALTMAN.
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
236 points (99.6% liked)
Steam Hardware
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Official Valve: Steam Hardware Launch timing (Q1/Q2 of 2026) and other FAQs
(steamcommunity.com)
I'd rather not
Depends what with. Vigorously with a rusty exhaust pipe might do the world a good
I honestly wish they'd just release the controller sooner rather than later. I can somewhat understand delaying the Machine and Frame due to the supply shortages, but if the controller is ready then they should just put it out there.
they just wanted to release 3 things at once. and once again valve fails at 3 :(
Third time's the charm. Oh wait...
Same here. My current Steam Controller is on its last leg and I've spent like 1000 hours on it.
I purchased mine for full price too. Unfortunately I do not like it for various reasons. Missing dpad and second stick, and holding it is a bit uncomfortable to my hands. And at the early days Steam Input wasn't this refined. But I loved using it to play with gyro controls. But will keep it, its history. :-)
The new controller is based on the Steam Deck controls and vastly superior to me (if we assume its like that). I can't imagine you don't liking it as much as the old controller.
Steam Controller really comes into it's own when you rely on both touchpads.
I usually map the left joystick to the left touchpad on touch, and if I need options for the D-pad map them to the joysticks instead or even touchpad 4 button click.
For side scrolling platformers I just map the D Pad to the left touchpad on touch, and ABXY to the right touchpad on touch.
I could not for the life of me get used to using the left pad mapped as a stick, and d-pad stuff on the stick just felt wrong. Still loved the controller, though.
I feel the same way. They must be adamant that they need to all launch at the same time or something. I think they should just release the controller ASAP, but they probably have a logistical reason not to.
But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).
Steam Machine's SSD (NVMe 2230 or 2280) and memory (DDR5 SODIMMs) are both accessible and upgradeable.
I wonder if they are going to end up deciding to sell a barebones SKU without storage/memory.
I used to think that would be a bad idea (because it's very un-console-like to sell a device that isn't plug-and-play out of the box) but I might be coming around on it a bit if it means a more affordable option.
They'd need to make it very clear to buyers, though.
The future is where ram is now a scarce item and everything comes with a easy pop in/out external ram slot and people are expected to move ram between devices.
It'd be like a SD card reader on laptop on all new hardware, but for ram.
That wouldn't work, too much latency, RAM needs to be as close to the CPU as possible.
Just put the cpu by all the ports?
It worked on the n64!
this may be a steam deck situation where they have different tiers and the lowest tier has the least amount of storage and ram, I can definitely see that happening
They did confirm two tiers for the Machine a 512gb and a 2tb. If they come out with a bare bones I've got a couple 500gb or 250gb drives lying around from old builds.
There goes my hope that they had some rock solid contracts for many years of ram in place before prices were stupid.
Even if they had, the manufacturers would probably break the contracts, pay fine and still be very much in profit.
I just want my Steam Controller 😭
Well, maybe I bite the bullet with the Frame later on.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m seeing prices get worse actively, not better.
Orders causing this have nearly two years of backlog.
Can I play non steam games with the Steam Controller? The controller can work with any game compatible with the Steam Overlay.
Just... Say no. I appreciate they answered the very next question I would have asked, but answer the question that you added to your own FAQ. Maybe it's my autism nitpicking but this really gets under my skin.
They probably said it like that because you can add any executable to steam as a non-steam game and activate the overlay. apparently some programs don't work? that's news to me.
Well any game or launcher or emulator have to support the controller or type of controller. In example Valve cannot guarantee that all functionality (like the trackpads and motion controls) are supported elsewhere.
They don't really have to support the controller, though. Steam input lets you map controller inputs to kb/m inputs, so no degree of controller support is required. If there are any programmes that don't work (which is possible, there are weird quirks in any system), I've certainly never encountered them.
Does steam input run on the controller itself or the device it's connected to though?
It runs as part of steam, so you would need to add the program you want to use to steam as an external program and start it through steam. Steam Input then runs as a translation layer around the other program. At least that's how it works on the Steamdeck.
But they answered the question. Valve can only guarantee that games are compatible with Steam Overlay compatible games. They don't want to commit to a "yes" or "no" for stuff outside Steam, and then be liable for that answer if it does not work as advertised and then get sued to the ground. So you cannot blame them.
I don't know on Windows, but on Linux you most likely can use the controller to play on any game. It's just not supported and guaranteed by Valve.
Windows is pretty much the same as Linux, it exposes the raw events from the device and it's up to the app to handle them. Pretty sure the overlay handles that by sitting between the OS and the game and e.g. translating everything to Xbox style controls if the game needs it (And getting out of the way if it doesn't)
Outside of that, well Valve added support for the controller to SDL, so anything using it will be fully supported. But then the game needs to actually be using a new enough version of SDL, otherwise it'll just see a generic controller device, and that can be hit or miss.
Not entirely the same, if the drivers are builtin into the Linux Kernel. I don't know if the Steam Controller drivers will be Open Source, so maybe its the same.
It definitely looks like it's going to be a standard USB HID type device, if their SDL support is anything to go by.