Comment on The Steam controller was ahead of its time
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
The entire industry has agreed on a de-facto standard for controllers, which is pretty much the PS1 controller:
- Two clickable thumbsticks
- Four face buttons
- D-pad
- Four triggers
- Two menu buttons
- The only thing the PS1 didn’t have (but games can’t use it, so maybe it doesn’t count?) - a button for showing the platform’s menu
You can add things on top of that (trackpads, gyros, making some of these digital buttons analog), but if you don’t have that - your controller won’t work for games that expect these inputs to be available.
If I had to put a date on when this became the established standard, I’d say 2005 or 2006 - the years when the XBox 360 and the PS3 were released, since both consoles had these capabilities (Nintendo kept doing its own thing, and only supported this standard starting with the Wii U). So when the Steam controller was released in 2015 - this standard was already established, controllers for PC made sure to support it - and even PC games stuck to it.
This is why I think the Steam Controller failed - you had to map it. You couldn’t use it like you would a standard controller even if the game was made for standard controllers.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
The original PS1 controller didn’t have joysticks, and when it did, the position sucked for larger hands. I have always preferred the XBox layout.
Did you? I thought most games worked fine, though admittedly I only played a couple because I never got used to the trackpads.
I think it wasn’t very post all popular because it was so different. Even if it worked as expected out of the box, a lot of people dismissed it at first glance. It was also only available through steam, so there was less reach.
But even then, I still don’t think it failed. I think there wasn’t a compelling reason to get it without a Steam Machine, which flopped because Valve didn’t commit to it.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Right. I meant the second PS1 controller, not the original one. The design changed over the years, but the general specs stayed as the baseline of controllers.
The XBox layout with its six face buttons did not stick, and the XBox 360 conformed with Sony’s design of four face buttons and two triggers. Which makes more sense for shooters (since you have more buttons while keeping your thumb on the right thumbstick)
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
Sure.
It’s important to note that the PS1 also borrowed from previous designs, namely the Super Nintendo with 4 face buttons and N64 (the controller with joysticks came out a year after).
Xbox’s main innovation was the offset joysticks, which may have been due to patents more than anything, but I preferred it. I also didn’t mind the two extra buttons, and was a little sad when they went away, because they were largely replaced by the joystick buttons, which I think are hard to use properly.
But yeah, design stagnated a bit after the PS1 controller.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Weren’t the black and white buttons replaced by triggers? The joystick buttons already existed in the first XBox.
Almacca@aussie.zone 17 hours ago
I find I keep accidentally clicking the thumbstick buttons, and I had the same problem with clicking the trackpads on the stream controllers. When the game gets tense I tend to increase my grip causing the clicks.