I felt like replacing one of the two sticks with a trackpad just ended up being the worst of both worlds. You don’t get the accuracy of using a mouse and you don’t get any of the design benefits of having twin sticks. The vast majority of controller supported games are designed with twin sticks in mind. Crimson Desert is a great example from recent memory because I can’t imagine doing circular motions on the right trackpad, which is what you need to do for one skill and the fishing minigame. My thumbs are too lazy for that. But with a stick that’s easy enough to do. Overall fighting games are harder, flying games are harder, twin-stick shooters are almost impossible. Any game that requires some stick-like movements from the right stick instantly get harder to play.

I’m not hating on the Steam Controller, there were quite a lot of innovations I would’ve loved with twin stick controller. The return of the twin sticks is the main reason I’m excited for the controller. I’m also happy with the Dpad coming back because I always felt that was also somewhat clunky on the first controller. Overall I think this one might end up being GOATed.