I think you are describing just one category of a way to stream, when you talk about connecting your controller to your phone, and then the phone acts as a wireless middleman to your PC.

You… can just directly, wirelessly, connect a controller to a PC via a 2.4ghz dongles, usb dongles, bluetooth connections… many ways to do this exist. The Steam Controller uses a usb dongle (which also doubles as a wireless charger for the controller when physically connected), and it also works via bluetooth (iirc).

Streaming is not the same thing as connecting a controller, not necessarily. You can stream the game rendering output from your PC to a TV, or to a phone, or to another PC… and you could do that over a local network, or you could do that from like a server farm across the internet, to a local device that doesn’t have to involve the controller, at all.

Like when you are watching a livestream … thats likely a phone camera or usb camera, streaming, live, to your device.

There are many different protocols and standards for streaming different kinds of content, to and from different kinds of hardware, via differing physical transmission methods, which may or may not support various kinds of input/output as well. Some of these are proprietary, some are open source, some work on some operating systems, specific hardware architecture (x86 vs ARM)… etc.

I do hear what you are saying when a proprietary tech is involved anywhere in the loop. Yes, it is always possible that one day, that could blow up in your face.

However, as best I am aware, SteamInput is a totally open standard… its sort of like a game engine where the source code is ‘available’, but it isn’t fully open to be freely modifiable.

You bring up robotics. You can make a robotics controller program in Godot, I’ve seen people do it. Godot also has an opensource plugin that supports SteamInput. So you could make a robotics project that works with a Steam Controller in that way. I’d say its pretty likely there are other game engines that support Steam Input as well, or other projects that do this in their own way.

But yes, it is always possible that Steam could become evil when Gabe retires/dies.

However, just as others have noted that proprietary designed Nintendo controllers have had people develop software for them that enables them to work on non Nintendo products… I would be amazed if that is not basically the case for the Steam Controller within a year or two, if it isn’t functionally already the case via stuff that’s been developed for the Steam Deck, that would only need updates.

Why does Valve not use a totally open universal standard?

Because no existing totally open universal standards supports all of the input and control functionality that the SteamInput system does.

Steam has a whole system of controller configs, hosted on Steam: A game publisher can issue an ‘official controller template’ for their games on Steam. Through Steam, users can tweak and customize and rebind keys and buttons and commands, and create their own controller templates for games… you can save these locally, tie them to your Steam account so they’ll work across devices, sort of like cloud saves, or, you can even publically upload these controller templates so that other users can use them, and then they can modify them, make their own version, etc.

Would all of this ideally be totally open source?

Yes.

But… Valve had to invent all of this, so they based it off of what they already had, that encourages people to use it with their platform, which is at least currently, a very open and featureful platform, at least as far as platforms go.

They are, after all, in a platform/console war, with other corpos, where said other corpos all have publically traded stocks and thus more money snd also investors they must please, whereas Valve does not.

Valve is not a third party, universal peripheral manufacturer.

They are a first party peripheral manufacturer.

Hopefully this reads less as an ‘I think this is totslly morally correct’ defense, than it does as an explanation.

… but the Steam Controller works with any hardware that can run Steam.

… which is… any PC, thats less than roughly 15-20 years old.

So this is absolutely not the exact same thing as what Nintendo does.

Steam is hardware agnostic. Nintendo is not.

You could run a Steam Controller on a Nintendo Switch, provided you got rid of Nintendo’s operating system, like so:

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/handheld-gaming/steam-shown-running-on-nintendo-switch-thanks-to-latest-proton-beta-fex-2604-translates-x86-to-arm-friendly-instructions-on-linux

Ok, I didn’t downvote you, but…

Its a Steam Controller.

For Steam.

… If you just made up some expectation, contrary to everything that Valve has said about this thing, and marketed it as…

To a certain extent, that is magical thinking, that is abandoning any concept of checking your hopes or expectations against… reality.

If you… want to run… a game… with this controller…

You install Steam, and the game.

Steam is the drivers, for the controller.

If you own the game in a way that you can’t add it to Steam… sorry about your DRM, I guess?

The Steam Controller has always been described by Valve as an evolution of the Steam Deck tech, both hardwsre and software… it pretty much literally is a Steam Deck, without the screen and PC, in a different shape.

EDIT:

IRT to your edit:

Point 1: Correct. The Steam Controller… works through Steam.

Point 2: … I don’t think the first half of this is correct. I’m not 100% sure, but I think you can do this via Moonlight/Sunshine. I mean… I know you can in general stream Steam games from a PC using Moonlight/Sunshine, I’m not 100% sure this will work with a Steam Controller… but it works on a Steam Deck, so… probably will work.

As to the second half of this… yeah, the Steam Controller probably won’t generally work as a controller for a game on a phone. Though FeX may actually somewhat/eventually aid with getting that to being possible.

Any projects? Make your project support Steam Input. I can’t speak for other engines too well, but Godot has GodotSteam, supports Steam Controllers, the SteamInput system.

As to your internet related concerns: Steam has an offline mode. Unless you are running a game via Steam that has its own/extra DRM that requires a constant internet connection, you’ll be fine.

SteamInput works without internet. If it didnt’t, a SteamDeck’s controls would not work at all without internet access. … It does.

EDIT 2:

Just for super duper clarity here:

Making a Steam account costs nothing.

Maintaining a Steam account costs nothing.

Any … .exe or .sh or whatever… can be added to Steam, to be launched and played via Steam.

The… only kind of situation where this wouldn’t work is essentially via a game that is installed/managed by some other platform that basically encrypts the exe in a way that only that platform can decrypt.

A GOG game, or something from Itch.io, with no DRM?

Plop it in Steam, it’ll work.

Wait, this is a ‘problem’?

People didn’t know this?

… can people not read?

Its… stated repeatedly, pretty plainly, that it works … with Steam.

???

You need to sign up for Teams to schedule into the orientation.

No.

Not that Teams.

The other one.

I think they actually use a setup of basically … something like minature subwoofers, but I’m not 100% sure of that.

Ah, you’re correct!

It quite literally fooled me, but you are right.

I guess worth noting for Steam newbies:

The trackpads can be configured to act as basically any possible kind of input.

You can break them down into 4 way buttons, 8 way buttons, 2 buttons, one button… make them work as a joystick, or as a mouse… they click in a bit at multiple points…

So, if you prefer a different kind of thumbstick orientation, you can basically emulate it.

Literally all of the buttons on one of these things can be reconfigured to do a whole bunch of crazy shit, you can make macros, you can make it so that a little hud popup with scrollable selectable options pop up, you can make combos of key presses do different specific inputs, you can make a turbo function… etc.

Hell, you can make the gyros act as a mouse/joystick input, in several different modes, maybe only when you hold the aim button down, if you want that.

Anything you run through Steam can be made to work this way with the Steam Input system they invented for with the Steam Deck, the Steam Controller 2.0 is basically a shrunk down Steam Deck without the PC and screen.

EDIT:

There is also an onscreen keyboard functionality, which pops up a keyboard overlay, and then you use both trackpads as basically two thumbs on a smart phone, sort of.

So, if you’re playing a game that is 99% controller input, but has a few UIs popups where you get prompted to type in your name or something like that, or I guess even a chat box in an mmo, you can handle it with this.

Also also: Most/Many games come with preset default Steam Input layouts made by the developers. Also, Everyone who uses Steam is capable of basically uploading their control schema for any game to the cloud, and then you are capable of grabbing it and using it.

So, with some games, the developer provided inputs are good, sometimes users develop alternate schemes that are actually better/quite popular, or, maybe you could be the one to make a better config that people like!

I mean, arguably… it isn’t a D Pad if its actually seperate buttons.

But anyway, with the Steam Deck, which the Steam Controller 2.0 is basically a scaled down version of, that doesn’t have the whole computer and screen… you can at least get after market uh… contact boards?

I’m not sure of the term, but like the internal platter board thing, that the dpad/abxy buttons actually physically connect to, with the trigger/switch mechanisms.

For my deck, I got a kit that replaces the original ones with ones that are much ‘clickier’, like a mechanical keyboard as compared to a membrane keyboard.

It has more tactile and also audio feedback, beyond just being more responsive… that was like $30 bucks or something?

For a while, it was the case that to do this kind of mod, you’d have to do your own solder, but I waited and eventually somebody in China somewhere started making ones that are pre-soldered, and just require an appropriate screw driver and some dexterity to install.

So… if the Steam Controller takes off, I’d say give it 6 months, and by then something similar will probably exist for it.

setsubyou got it more correct, my terminology is a bit off.

Yeah, you can lock the refresh rate at basically 15hz intervals (i think, last time i checked?), which is not true VRR, but, if you take the time to configure profiles and graphics settings per game, get stable and consistent frame rates, and then match the configurable refresh rate to that…

… this is sorta close to the … idea/performance of what true VRR is going for, it just doesn’t all work ‘automagically’.

I have an OLED, not an LCD, so yeah it looks like the LCD tops out at 60hz.

So with an LCD, you could aim for basically ‘always a bit above 30 fps’ and then 60hz, for that 1:2 ratio, and with an OLED, aim for ‘always a bit above 45 fps’, and then 90hz, for the same 1:2 ratio.

Its not the same, of course, as actually having 60 or 90 fps, but, as long as your fps never dips below the screen refresh rate, it looks/feels smoother than doing a 30fps or 45fps traditional vsync.

But of course, you’ll probably only need to do this for… significantly graphically heavy games… tons of less graphically intense / better optimized games will not need this level of tinkering min maxxing.

A neat trick you can do with heavier games on … at least an OLED Deck (not sure if this is doable on the LCD version)…

You target 45 fps, min, lock the max frame rate at something like 45-50, then, use VRR set at a 1:2 ratio, so you get 45 fps at 90hz.

In many games, this generally, at least imo, ends you up with a smoother and potentially graphically higher quality than just targeting 60 fps / 60 hz.

You can also use Optiscaler / DeckyFrameGen to basically hack different/better ability to do upscaling and framegen into a fair number of games that otherwise don’t normally support it.

For instance, the OptiScaler people recently, successfully managed to get FSR 4 working on RX 6000 and 7000 cards, which also works on a Deck.

They essentially reverse engineered the previously leaked FSR4 driver to work on INT 8.

I am equally annoyed that it took them this long to finally get around to it, but happy that they did.

… Like, a Canon printer/photocopier?

So its just projectile vomiting generated images of the scene you likely intended to describe?

I also hate the default setting.

I changed it to uh, left thumpad moves the mouse, left thumbpad click is middle click, remap the right pad to be 4 way buttons, top and left to left click, bottom and right to right click.

Moved scroll to L2 and R2, or you could map them to up and down on a joycon, or the dpad, or L1 and R1, etc.

Valve can take the risk on doing actual innovation because they functionally have a large pool of ‘fun money’, that does not come with a board of shareholders attached to it demanding that it constantly be put to use making next quater profits be as high as possible.

You save up that fun money fund, and when an actual good idea gets committed to, you can now actually just fund at least a moderately sized go at it.

… and, because its … you know, their money, with no shareholder or lender strings attached to it… they could fail completely, and then just eat the loss.

As opposed to now having to reorient other segments of the company to make more money to make up the difference to the board or lenders.

Valve doesn’t have utterly huge manufacturing (or warehousing) capabilities the way MSFT, Sony, or Nintendo do.

They very likely just retooled the spaces they were using for the Steam Decks over into making Machines, Frames, new Steam Controllers.

As in, they probably just entirely stopped mfging new Steam Decks like… I dunno, 3 to 9 months ago?

The RAMpocalypse certainly isn’t helping, but I’d say its much more significantly due to Valve running basically a pretty small manufacturing capability compared to other … game-device makers.

… that and ironically having to pay import tariffs to actually get things from China into the US.

Thanks for that a lot to think about

Happy to have an infodump/perspective appreciated, thank you!

=)

I should note that the Steam Machine unfortunately does not appear to be designed with an eGPU in mind.

(Err, well, thats kinda sorta not true. The way a Steam Machine and Steam Frame, the VR headset work together… well the Steam Frame has an ARM, cellphone stype chip, built into it, and it can run less intense games just on its own. So, it is arguably technically the case that… that is a kind of wirelessly connected sort of eGPU for the Steam Machine… or the Steam Machine is a wirelessly connected sort of eGPU for the Steam Frame.)

It may be possible to… somewhat substantially hardware modify the Steam Machine, to get something like a physically connected eGPU working, people did figure out a kind of ‘janky but does technically work’ way to do that with a Steam Deck…

But basically, we’ll have to wait for the thing itself, or detailed schematics of it to come out, to see if that’s possible with a Steam Machine.

Alot of Steam Deck type devices, not made by Valve, other handheld-pcs (have controller and screen built in, vs mini-pc which is basically a small box or closer to the size and shape of a console), they do have usb4/thunderbolt ports that more easily support an eGPU set up… but they tend to be significantly more expensive.

So yeah, we shall see!

Its very unfortunate that the AI/RAM-pocalypse is happening at the exact same time that… well what could potentially be a bit of a revolution in the entire concept how to build a pc/gaming machine seems to be possible.

It may be the case that it ends up making more sense to have a new paradigm where you just have the cpu+ram+mobo+minor integrated gfx as one physical thing, and then some kind of an eGPU as another thing, and treat them as two modular components of a total system.

Yes, that’s all true.

It is not just a console, it is a full-on PC.

Run your own home media mode, browse the web, make stuff in Blender, write and compile code, etc, I do all of that regularly with my docked Steam Deck.

But I went with Mini PC rather than Steam Deck for comparison because, though it very much literally is a Steam Deck 3.0, in a lot of ways… I think its closer to a mini PC than anything else.

MiniPCs are basically small boxes often comparable to, I dunno, a large jar of pickles, in size. They… also do not have the functionality of a gamepad controller, or built in screen, as actual physical parts of them.

And they basically always have integrated cpu+mobo, RAM is usually laptop SODIMM form factor, and then either the cpu they use is actually an apu, or an npu, as opposed to laptops often having a discrete but laptop sized gpu, or full-on pcs typically having full-on gpus.

Or, its becoming more common for a mini-pc to juat be designed with either an oculink port, or a usb 4.0/tbunderbolt port, with the idea being that its a decent general purpose work pc in its own, and if you want to game on it (or do some other kind of more intensive work like video editing/rendering, complex 3d model creation, etc), you get an eGPU cradle, stick a power supply and desktop GPU in it, and then connect it to the miniPC, which can then use that GPU nearly as efficiently as if it were just directly plugged into it.

I am doing something similar, with a similarly old TV, and can get the render res up to 1600 x 900 for a good deal of stuff.

Can’t quite handle 1920 x 1080 though, that starts to be just generally problematic.

Here’s a way to think of it:

It’s a mini-pc.

But a bit bigger.

So… yeah, even if it is expensive by console pricing standards… $600 to $1000 is actually a pretty reasonable range for comparably powerful mini-pcs.

Look up like NUCBoxes or Minisforum miniPCs.

The runor that MooresLawIsDead was initially running with was that the actual custom chip they are using was originally slated to be used in something like a new variant of a MicroSlop Surface tablet.

AMD fabbed a bunch, MicroSlop bailed on the idea, leaving AMD with a bunch of weird custom chips they don’t know wtf to do with.

Valve then goes to AMD, begins to uh, think with portals, or whatever.