If you’re fairly confident that you won’t be able to live without a gamepad that looks a bit like the face of an owl, it may be time to pre-order a Steam controller.
Today, Valve has announced that people are able to do just that; opening up pre-orders for the controller, streaming Steam link device, and some of the third-party Steam Machines as well.
The Steam wireless controller, of course, is aiming to serve as both a traditional gamepad and pseudo mouse-and-keyboard option (perhaps in situations where setting up mouse and keys is less viable.) It should also mean that games without official controller support on Steam now have a viable pad option. As the controller’s store blurb says, “The Steam Controller lets you play your entire collection of Steam games on your TV—even the ones designed without controller support in mind.”
That same store page also notes that a limited amount of controllers will be shipped out early, on 16 October, to those who pre-order (at $50.) The official launch date is a few weeks later, in November 2015.
Here’s a controller-centric trailer put together by Valve to try to win you over.
The central Steam store hardware page is also the place to find pre-order links to the Steam Link (a streaming box that you hook up to your home network in order to stream games from a powerful PC to a nearby television,) and a couple of Steam Machines.
As with the controller, a limited number of Steam Link pre-orders will be sent out early, in mid-October. It’s the same price too: $50.
