One of the big surprises coming out of the recently concluded Steam Dev Days is that Valve will add full DualShock 4 support to the Steam Controller API.
During the Steam Controller developer session, speakers Jeff Bellinghausen (Engineer at Valve) & Lars Doucet (Co-Founder at Level Up Labs) revealed that the DualShock 4 controller is very much like the Steam Controller in a number of ways. The very same API calls have to be made and it has functionality like the touchpad or the three-axis gyroscope for motion detection.
Valve chose to begin supporting the DualShock 4 first because it's a popular and "high quality" controller, but also because existing native support on PC was admittedly weak when compared with Microsoft's Xbox controllers. Hopefully this can be a significant improvement, at least for games that use Steam's API.
More importantly, this will allow gamers to fully customize their DualShock 4 controller just like they would with the Steam Controller. Here's an example below.
If you want something like this for your Xbox One controller, don't worry. Valve also has plans to support other devices, though they were not presently able to disclose which ones and at which times. Still, the Xbox One controller is so popular and widespread that eventually supporting it seems almost a given.
Are you excited for the possibilities allowed by this upcoming update to Steam's API? Would you have preferred if Valve chose to begin with the Xbox controller? Let us know in the comments.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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