Steam controller in action

[Tutonic]

Oh my.

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[albert]

Same - mine was shipped on 28th and still in Netherlands Depot

Mine was shipped 2 weeks ago, I'm in the bl00dy Netherlands

[TeaLeaf]

My Steam Controller and Steam Link arrived at 07:05 this morning.  Woot! :clap:

Lookout for a knock on the door from ParcelForce.  I won't get time to connect them up today, but I'll be trying it out asap.

[albert]

Dispatach for mine is today. Should arrive later today of tomorrow. Side scroller weekend here I come.

[BrotherTobious]

Looks like mine is on it way.

So glad I set my rig up last night!

[Milli]

Yup mine just arrived [emoji1]

[BrotherTobious]

Mine is here at my desk at work

[Tutonic]

Just setting these up....







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[BrotherTobious]

I  am still at work

Sent from my Nexus 5

[Tutonic]

That was easy, we're in business!



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[BrotherTobious]

Nice work mate

[Tutonic]

The track pad will take some getting used to, but the streaming is excellent.

Here's Dying Light running nicely:



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[BrotherTobious]

Got mine running

Sent from my Nexus 5

[Tutonic]

Early impressions:

1. The Steam Link is a fantastic piece of kit. Plug it in and off you go - everything worked flawlessly at the first attempt.
2. Steam's streaming is good - I didn't have any performance issues on a wired ethernet connection. Wireless is, as you would expect, going to be much more variable. There are some quirks with games that like to open little pop-up dialogues before launching, but the Steam controller emulates a mouse so well it wasn't hard to click through any buttons/menus needed to launch a game. Which leads me to:
3. The controller. First impressions are good, this is a well made piece of hardware and cleverly designed - I especially liked the way the batteries are loaded in.

There are a huge number of buttons/functions compared to something like a basic Xbox pad, and here lies it's biggest strength and ultimately also its biggest weakness. The large number of buttons mean you can use this thing with just about any type of game you can think of, but it's going to need to be configured for each one. There are a handful of 'developer' profiles you can switch on for supported games, these work really well but for most games I tested you will currently have to set up your own profile (essentially binding keyboard/mouse commands to the controller), or use one created & shared by the Steam community (these are a pretty good starting point for making your own profile).

The level of customisation you have over the buttons and in particular the two haptic feedback pads is insane - you really can tweak to the Nth degree until you're happy. Which is nice.

Using the pad to emulate a mouse feels really weird at first, but I got used to it really quickly - within half an hour I was whizzing through Company of Heroes and moving units around with a nice level of precision. Counter Strike was harder to get used to, but it's a quantum leap from using an Xbox pad - this is the best controller I've used for an FPS by miles.

I am very impressed, especially considering this is Valve's first real shot at something like this. I see many happy hours of Civ 5 on the sofa in my future

[albert]

I'm was not getting a controller firmware update no matter how many times I try. It kept saying connect to the host PC via USB which I did and then nothing happened.

Then I removed myself from the Steam Beta Programme and it updated ok with normal Steam. Then back on the Beta. Just a tip.