Valve Announces Touch-Enabled Steam Controller

No, Valve didn’t just announce Half-Life 3. Instead of placating its fans hungry for software, the company has revealed the Steam Controller, which will act as the best way to play your entire Steam library from the comfort of the couch.

“We set out with a singular goal: bring the Steam experience, in its entirety, into the living-room. We knew how to build the user interface, we knew how to build a machine, and even an operating system. But that still left input — our biggest missing link,” the announcement reads. “We realized early on that our goals required a new kind of input technology — one that could bridge the gap from the desk to the living room without compromises. So we spent a year experimenting with new approaches to input and we now believe we’ve arrived at something worth sharing and testing with you.”

Every single Steam game will function with the gamepad, which will feature two trackpads, haptics, and a touch screen intended to allow “an infinite number of discrete actions to be made available to the player, without requiring an infinite number of physical buttons.” It’s a unique design to say the least, with half of the 16 buttons accessible without requiring thumbs to be lifted from the trackpads.

Look to hear more on this piece of hardware in the near future. And Half-Life 3? Don’t get your hopes up.