Vyralize: Valve was really striving for something different, when they revealed their controller for the first time late last year. There were no physical buttons to speak of, and it was hard to picture how the controller would actually be used. Well, it turns out just like the Steam machines themselves, the controller was also part of the beta test. It was also discovered that gamers like buttons.
With Steam Machines of Valve initiative pulled out and SteamOS being in limbo, it is the right moment to see how the supplement of Proton to Steam Play has managed in nearly two years it is been accessible.
Yesterday, Valve announced that it has shipped more than 500,000 Steam controllers since unveiling them in November. While that number sounds initially impressive for a brand new console and operating system, a closer analysis reveals it’s actually pretty bad.
To me, the whole thing seemed more like one big market test. I mostly believe this because Valve played it safe by licensing it out to 3rd parties; like Alienware... and they also made Steam OS free to download.
I also have a rather strong feeling that the major console makers are very interested in utilizing the data Valve accumulated from their "tests". With the aforementioned in mind and hearing things about Neo and Scorpio, it's easy to speculate that Sony and MS looked very carefully at what Valve did with their Steam Machines. However, we may not actually see any of it until the official "next generation" of consoles a couple more years down the road after Neo and Scorpio launch.
I said this back when everyone was riding the Steam Machine hype train, PC gamers are too busy with their glorious rigs and its too late to try and tap into the Console Market.
Maximum PC: Here's a quick heads up that the Steam Machine movement has officially begun with the availability of Steam Hardware, including dedicated systems (Steam Machines), a custom controller (Steam Controller), and a streaming device (Steam Link).
Why can't there be buttons, and the touch screen in the middle?