- 53 minutes ago
PC Gamer's Jacob Ridley and Dave James sit down with Valve's Steve Cardinali and Lawrence Yang to discuss the brand new Steam Controller. They cover everything from pricing and availability to design philosophy and their expectations for the launch.
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00:00so the steam controller comes out on may 4th and before the reveal we sat down with steve
00:04cardinale and lawrence young from valve to talk about steam controller we knew that
00:08definitely we'd want to ship steam controller uh before or with steam machine yeah a steam
00:14machine without steam controller at all makes a little less sense yeah we spoke about availability
00:19pricing which we obviously know now but we're chatting a bit more about the idea behind that
00:23price has gone up from where we originally wanted it to be the prices is going to vary depending on
00:29where you're purchasing it and also spare parts and loads of other good stuff yeah so uh check it out
00:34i hope you enjoy i'm lawrence yang i'm a designer and i work on steam and hardware stuff for steam
00:43controller i i helped a lot with kind of like a lot of the user experience stuff like the pairing
00:48flow
00:48and some of the packaging design stuff but graphic design and i also do a lot of stuff around the
00:53marketing and website and communications as a designer we we spread our fingers out all over
00:58the company so i i do a lot of different things here and i'm steve carnelli i'm a hardware engineer
01:04here my focus is mechanical engineering so i'm i was involved with bringing this controller from
01:10initial inception all the way through mass production helping to design components and bringing it to life
01:15this is kind of slightly different to the to the steam deck launch as in this is going like to
01:20every
01:20territory all at once this time around steam deck lcd was was more staged where we did western
01:25territories and then we shipped um in the uh asian regions through komodo later on and then with
01:30oled we actually did a simultaneous launch and this will also be a simultaneous launch so we're
01:34going to be making them all all available everywhere at the same time we were discussing in the office
01:39i think it was yesterday where we were saying you know how well do we think the steam control
01:43is because we've both been playing with it the last like week or so what are your expectations for
01:47this going in in terms of the response especially when i visited last november we thought steam
01:53frame that's the thing everyone's going to really like love and then the steam machine people were
01:58like really really into and now it seems like people are like oh a steam controller that's the
02:03one thing i'm definitely 100 gonna get so do you think that that's actually going to be the real big
02:08volume player here well one we want all of them to you right and it's great to hear that everyone
02:13is
02:13excited all of them in different ways and and a lot of times there's overlap in those audiences steam
02:17control is interesting because it's the only one of the three that is kind of an accessory that can add
02:22onto an existing system right so if you have a steam deck you can use a steam controller with it
02:26but if you have a pc you can use a steam controller with it so like the addressable market seems
02:30much
02:30larger the price point is much more accessible obviously compared to everything else so we could
02:34see uh we could see controller doing really well we hope that a lot of people around the world really
02:39really like it and and we we sell a bunch of them so i'm optimistic about it i'm optimistic too
02:45yeah
02:45based on what we've heard here in the office people are like oh i love this thing it feels like
02:48this is a
02:49thing that's going to get sold out real quick how do you feel about like the the stock situation
02:54how quickly you're going to be able to to restock places going forward we have built up a good supply
03:00of this but you know it's based on what we anticipate supply to be and supply could be much larger
03:06than we
03:06anticipate in which case like our production has a finite limit on how much we can make and we'll
03:12do our best to to keep up with demand if it greatly exceeds our expectations we do have knobs we
03:19have knobs we can turn to try to get things to people faster it's complicated and you know the
03:24the the mass production machine is a big machine with a lot of momentum so depending on how it goes
03:29for the first you know chunk of time if we have a lot high demand and it stays high demand
03:34there's
03:34there's things we can do to help alleviate that down the road but we do think we'll have a good
03:38amount of stock around the world for the launch yeah um and then you know the way it works like
03:43you're
03:43you have the what's already in the warehouse and we have whatever is already shipping on the way to the
03:48warehouse like all of that stuff is currently moving already yeah and then at the factory if we're like
03:52oh we actually probably need to make more then we can turn that knob up and like have them producing
03:57more but then there's a lag so we we did our best to guess you know forecasting is one of
04:02those
04:03you know alchemy like who knows you do your best and then you're like never exactly right but we we
04:09try
04:09to build enough um wiggle room so that we can try not to be out of stock for a really
04:14long time yeah
04:15luckily some controllers don't have ram in them so you know that's good obviously the other releases
04:20have been pushed back because has that sort of slight delay helped you guys like build up that
04:26stock in that stock and the inventory in the channel they're independent of one another we make sure that
04:30each program has its own dedicated supply line and supply chain and so one thing maybe being a little
04:36bit slower doesn't make something else speed up we saw a few rumors circulating that oh maybe they're
04:40they're holding steam controller back so that other things can be shipped around the same time or
04:45it's that that's not the case we're shipping steam controller when we when we can and this is this
04:49is now when we can and part of it is making sure the product is ready the firmware is finalized
04:55and
04:55making sure that we have enough stock and warehouses to have a good launch quantity that's a that's a big
04:59one right we we we wanted to make sure we had a lot on hand because we do anticipate high
05:04demand but
05:05you know i could always exceed our expectations as well i was going to get into some of the
05:10slightly smaller things that i was going to ask about so after i've been testing this like i said
05:15over the past week i've been trying not to charge it too much because i was like i want to
05:18test for
05:19the battery life is does it have overt battery overcharged protection so when you're putting it down on
05:23the on the puck yeah you can sort of safely leave it it's fine yeah we took that into consideration
05:28partially because the puck is so convenient that like at least with all of us we just put it down
05:32whenever we're done right in the puck it just sucks it up starts charging we knew that would
05:35kind of be a typical use case for a customer so we do have that built in it's no problem
05:40to leave
05:40it on obviously it's built into into the steam machine but we've got a puck separately so where
05:45do you charge when you're plugged into the steam machine do you you still go with a puck well every
05:49controller will come with a puck even if you get it with a steam machine so a lot of people
05:54here actually
05:55just use it as a charging station once they have like a machine and a puck and even if you're
06:00paired
06:01directly to the to the internal puck of the steam machine you can still plug it externally and like
06:06use it as a charging station or just plug it into the wall with yeah it's out there like next
06:10to your
06:10couch and then you just charge it yeah wherever like on your you know on your little coffee table
06:15or whatever yeah so i was going to quickly touch on repairability i did take your baby apart quite a
06:20few times i'm afraid but i've been quite impressed with how quickly you can peel all the parts away
06:25i was just going to ask you know was repairability i think with the steam deck that was kind of
06:29a big focus
06:30was that big focus just with the core design here yeah we wanted to make sure it was easily
06:34accessible for customers we know our community right they want to take it open and if they want
06:38to swap something out they can do that if they want to make their buttons look different that's
06:42fine with us it's easy to open in this case purposefully there's no snaps in this if you
06:46notice when you open the seven screws it just comes right off you don't have to worry about
06:49oh where do i put my yeah you know the battery we wanted to make sure the battery was something
06:56that
06:57you know we don't anticipate it being a problem for anybody but if if they wanted to swap it out
07:01for whatever reason like we intentionally designed it to be easily serviceable right you can just
07:05swap it out you don't need to unplug a connector or anything just put new one in so yeah it
07:09definitely was part of the consideration do you think you're going to make replacement parts
07:13available like you did the steam deck through like a third party at all we will be making
07:17replacement parts available through ifixit um just like last time it won't be at launch but
07:23after launch they will be made available so we'll be working with them again i think one of the
07:26things that that struck me about the steam control is that there's there's just so much there's so
07:31much in it there are so many features on it like you've got the gyro and you've got the haptics
07:34you've
07:35got the touchpads was there anything else that you wanted to squeeze in there but had to be left on
07:39the cutting room floor is there anything else that as designers you just like i want to get this in
07:43there one of the main guiding principles was we wanted to be familiar to people with steam deck
07:48because one of the impetus for this program was we have about a 20 attach rate for people with
07:53the docks for steam controller and we know those people are putting their steam deck in a dock and
07:57then sitting down and playing with some controller that doesn't have all the inputs or their layouts
08:00and templates still come over and port over so we wanted to fill that gap and the more you add
08:05that
08:05is new the more that gap no longer is like hey i'm still playing my steam deck on the couch
08:09or maybe
08:10you know the smaller form factor it becomes like i'm playing with this new thing that has different
08:14stuff i have to always keep in my mind as i switch so there was a desire to make sure
08:21we don't go too
08:21far from what we have in steam deck for that on top of that we wanted to make sure we
08:25provided users
08:26with what we believe are like lots of flexibility for how to play games so you know when jacob was
08:33here
08:34we showed him the demo of playing a game like bellatro with trackpads with gyro and with just the
08:38controller config and that's like three different ways somebody can play pick to play a game and for gyro
08:43specifically there's a big community around gyro aiming for competitive games and others and so
08:50that one we did want to add you know the grip sense to help that community with with ratcheting
08:55specifically so that was like the one thing that kind of made the cut is something distinct and
09:00unique that we wanted to get in there to help similar to how the first steam controller we wanted to
09:05say hey trackpads are something you can use when you're playing competitive games gyro is another one
09:09that's like trackpads where it's like you can use this to do highly competitive games and we want
09:14to give you what you need to do it so it was more about giving people as much variety and
09:18how they
09:18can play as possible and not necessarily some of the more bells and whistles that people add that maybe
09:25are convenient things but would drive up the cost or eat battery life or things like that we we wanted
09:31to
09:31stay focused i think you've got one convert um in terms of the gyro things here oh great yeah surprise
09:37jacob
09:38like when he's been playing with it it's just like yeah i'm i'm into i'm into the gyro now since
09:41you
09:42guys have like had it been using it day to day like is there anything that like has surprised you
09:46about
09:46how you've been interacting with it how or how it's changed how you interact with your machines at all
09:51yeah i mean me personally i've put a lot of time recently into writing up some guides for how to
09:57use
09:58steam input to customize your controller experience which we plan on releasing over the next couple of
10:02weeks and just the amount that you've been doing there is like whenever i go in and play a game
10:06now i'm
10:07always like fiddling with the features to make sure i have like the greatest possible experience
10:11i would say i was blown away by how competitive i can be in like a first person shooter with
10:16gyro
10:16it just feels so natural when i'm using the controller so i definitely have i'm a convert
10:21there as well pretty much for any deck builder game i play or any kind of like simple nice games
10:27i i
10:29just feel so much more comfortable like leaning back with my controller and using the right trackpad
10:32as mouse and the left one is click and just like really comfortable just sitting back playing i've
10:37changed the way i play just based on what this affords and a lot of it is in steam deck
10:40already but um
10:41you know this is another way to do the same stuff honestly i've been using the steam controller mostly
10:46as a mouse to get to disney plus um chrome because we have it plugged into our tv nice but
10:55when i play when i play games it is it just feels really comfortable because like you know i don't
10:59have to use an xbox controller i just like okay i can seamlessly go from my deck to my pc
11:04with a steam
11:04controller or steam machine with steam controller and then play the same games with the same uh with
11:08the same bindings it just feels really natural and comfortable so especially coming from a deck it just
11:14feels great did you have any other prototypes for sort of how you'd imagine this controller coming
11:19together because i remember before it got announced there were people on reddit being like oh this
11:24velvet totally gonna do this with the steam controller and you know what like some of their pro like some
11:28of their mock-ups were pretty spot on yeah and i was just wondering if you had any like bolder
11:33like sort of different visions for what it was going to be like before you went oh you know what
11:37we
11:37can do this we saw a lot of those and we would see them sometimes like oh that's that one's
11:41pretty close
11:41that's pretty close in this instance like because we knew we were coming from the steam deck and we
11:45wanted to be familiar it was it was less about like all the different unique ways we can put these
11:51configs together but or sorry the inputs together but more about how do we take the inputs essentially
11:57laid out the same way that they are in the steam deck and put it in a controller in a
12:01comfortable way
12:02that doesn't feel too big inputs feel accessible even for people with smaller hands that was more of the
12:07challenge and so there was a lot of iteration around like ergonomic changes and then like a lot
12:12of id um concepts and how do we want to highlight the features not so much like do we switch
12:19these
12:19inputs and have one up high and one down low as opposed to where they are on the steam deck
12:23we wanted
12:23it to be familiar we didn't want to have like too much muscle memory impact going back and forth it
12:28goes back to that learning curve thing i guess which is i guess what one what people used to say
12:32about
12:32first gen scene controller was like well there's a learning curve whereas this it feels very much like
12:37you just pick it up and it's a normal controller and then there's some trackpads yeah we wanted
12:41we wanted it to be accessible to to everybody and like it might some people might look at it and
12:45be
12:45like whoa like that's a little intimidating but we want them to hold it and say like oh this is
12:48just
12:48a controller i know how to use this with the the price hikes that obviously you know valve has said
12:53that's
12:54impacting i mean everyone knows about ram price hikes at the moment was there any price hikes or anything
12:59that you are having to deal with in terms of controller i know that you know it's not got
13:02loads of ram in it or anything but it's just that the general demand for all of this stuff supply
13:07chains
13:07is kind of under pressure at the moment i suppose so is that there be any repercussions i'm not the
13:12expert on this but like i i do know like price has gone up from where we originally wanted it
13:17to be
13:18we also you may have noticed uh in the price list that we sent you there are some variants across
13:22regions so depending on where a customer is going to buy it because of imports and tariffs
13:28and duties etc the prices is going to vary depending on where you're purchasing it that is something
13:34that has changed a bit over time too obviously we're talking about steam controller here but
13:37it does it does marry into um steam sheet and steam frame as well like what's the mood in the
13:44team
13:44right now obviously we're going into the launch of the steam controller that's super exciting but having
13:48announced everything had all the hype and all the excitement around november to then come into 26 and
13:55just be like slammed with ram prices how are you guys feeling like about things right now i mean
14:00obviously we're we're bummed that this is the the state of things um it at the very least we're not
14:07the only ones in this boat like everyone's kind of figuring out how to overcome these obstacles and
14:14challenges you know ram shortages memory shortages price hikes everything it's unavoidable that it will
14:19impact basically anything we make that has any of those parts in them so we're doing our best to
14:24make sure that we can make the product and have it still available at as as good and competitive a
14:32price as we can yeah it's challenging for sure yeah i mean no no engineer who designs a product wants
14:38to
14:39like you're like right there and then you have this whole challenge run at you last minute it's it's
14:44it's frustrating but yeah we're working our hardest to to get resolution there do you find it difficult to
14:49plan ahead knowing that the pricing is so it's fluctuating constantly you just don't know i mean
14:54we don't know when this is going to end it could be years it could be you know it could
14:58be a long long
14:59time it is very difficult it's it's hard we're trying to figure out um you know you had pricing
15:06forecasts from suppliers and like they don't they also don't know how much they're going to be able to
15:12make available and how much for how much so it's you know everyone is is doing their best uh in
15:18the
15:18fog of war yeah you alluded to it earlier that um steam control is coming out when it was ready
15:23when you wanted steam control to come out so was this kind of like almost always the plan or like
15:29with the other products getting pushed back was there ever a chance where you're going to like well
15:33we're going to hold this back and wait for wait for steam machine wait for the steam frame to come
15:37out
15:37we'll launch them all together or have you had to push that out on its own not really while they
15:43they share a lot of the same unit and we did announce them all at the same time we knew
15:47that
15:47there was some chance that that schedules would move and we would just ship them when they were ready
15:51we knew that definitely we'd want to ship steam controller uh before or with steam machine yeah
15:57uh steam machine without steam controller at all uh makes a little less sense uh but other than that
16:03i i think that we kind of earlier earlier on this year we knew that steam controller would probably
16:08be coming out first um and so there was no no real desire or need to like artificially make them
16:14ship simultaneously because then that would just push everything else out when you do the steam deck
16:18it's just like a constant flood of updates and i know that that's like a totally different beast
16:22because it's an entire system but yeah the pace of updates is is wild and still going however many
16:27years after release now i mean it's kind of wild do you expect or anticipate having a lot of updates
16:32for the steam controller after the fact like adding new stuff in the software or different
16:36features that side um or do you think it's sort of like once it comes out that's sort of where
16:40you're
16:40gonna you land with the features and you're happy with that there's a lot of a lot of churn fire
16:45to
16:45launch to get the the the firmware and software and as good a place as possible so that day one
16:50customers have their day one update and it's stable and it runs well and it runs well for everybody
16:55at valve though we're constantly thinking about how to improve things and we want to fix bugs and like
17:02maybe there's some stuff in the back burner that we want to get in there too we probably anticipate
17:07over the first couple of months a little bit more churn as we respond to customer feedback
17:13and then it'll probably taper off and like it'll just be maintenance stuff but you know there's
17:18always stuff we're thinking about and stuff that we could add later as we're ready yeah right the
17:24software work is ongoing as you notice we're always updating steam always making it better and fixing
17:29bugs and adding features so those features might also be steam controller related or steam input
17:34related so those will always be coming in as as we as we hear feedback and as we want to
17:40add new
17:40features but probably since it's a piece of hardware that's not running its own operating system it won't
17:46like it won't be getting firmware updates every week you're getting to the settings and there's so
17:50there are so many different things that you can you can tweak it almost feels like the user whether
17:54they expect it to or not it's going to spend a lot more time in those settings in those profile
17:58things tweaking things is that something that you kind of had to keep in mind that new people are
18:03going to be coming into those template settings and making sure that they're sort of like as
18:06accessible as possible yeah and that actually goes back to what i had mentioned earlier where
18:10a few people on the team i've been working through kind of like tutorials for steam input for for new
18:15people you know we want everybody to be able to take advantage of the power that we've put into it
18:21and make it accessible to as many people as possible so we'll be rolling those out like i
18:25said over the next couple of weeks it's like a hey how do you make the most out of your
18:28controller
18:28with the trackpad here's some settings you can change here's some basic things you can you can
18:32modify to get a good user experience gyro and things like that just to get people up and running
18:38and to give them a taste and and then maybe they can dig in deeper i think on the other
18:41side of that
18:42coin we also want to make sure that someone who maybe just wants to play games yeah doesn't have to
18:47really get in there so we try to make it as simple as possible like you open the box there's
18:51some
18:51graphics like plug the things in we have a nice ui that says update the things and then ideally you
18:56can just get into a game and start playing and we have like default templates that will just work
19:00it just steam controller sucked in all the great steam community templates from steam deck and they
19:06just work on steam controller so those are already all set developers can set the default there
19:10ideally if i'm a person who's like well i don't want to dig around in settings i just want to
19:15plug this
19:15in and play my games and have it work it should also be great for that kind of person as
19:19well do
19:20you find it difficult to jump between say you're working on the steam controller i know we were
19:24speaking lawrence before in november i think it was when you're chatting about the steam frame you know
19:28and doing everything with that and doing a lot of different things is it difficult to just jump
19:33between them day to day or are you do you find it sort of that's just your workflow now it's
19:37definitely
19:37something i've gotten better at since i've been here a lot of context switching is happening day like
19:42within a day and across days but it's a skill there's a skill set you you pick up being here
19:47helping with different programs and there's our talk there are times where you know maybe one
19:51project workload might just tip down for a bit and you can hop and support something else i hop to
19:56support steam frame for a little bit when there was a lull on the controller you try to help where
20:01you think you can when it makes sense i mean we think about all of our products hardware and software
20:06holistically and usually there's there's a lot of opportunities um where there is overlap yeah
20:11like oh we're doing this this is what we're doing on steam controller we did this on steam deck
20:16we should make it the same for steam machine 2 and steam frame so that we're all using the same
20:20kind of language or there's some kind of systems or from a code perspective using the same code there's
20:25a lot of benefit in that overlap it makes it easier to do that so that was steve cardinale and
20:30lauren chang of valve and what do you think of the chat i thought it was really interesting i think
20:33it was
20:34i think it was really interesting to to see about all the availability stuff because i think that's
20:38going to be a really really key issue yeah the repairability stuff i think is also super super
20:41interesting the fact that we're actually going to get i play some parts through i fix it that was
20:45really good and i'm always impressed with just how many things they seem to have on the go at the
20:48same time so many hats all of this hardware stuff and also like they're developing deadlock which is a
20:52really good game that i play a lot so you know there's a lot going on thanks it's also interesting
20:56to
20:56see how they're feeling right now given everything that's going on in the industry yeah it's tough times out
21:03so yeah what do you think are you going to pick up a steam controller when it comes out on
21:06may 4th
21:07let us know in the comments and subscribe for more on steam controller and a bunch of other stuff