What baffles me is I’ve yet to see another handheld with touchpads that can even begin to rival the Steam Deck’s.
AYANEO has them on the Retro Mini PC but they’re smaller and way too far down to be comfortable to use regularly.
The touchpads are one of the Steam Deck’s greatest features. They actually make it enjoyable to play games designed for use with a mouse. Why are none of the other manufacturers getting that?
Those other manufacturers didn’t launch a new controller design. Valve did. It was fine and they learned how to make it great. Valve learned by experimenting with shape, button locations, track pads themselves were entirely new; it must have been a wild time in those hardware labs.
What baffles me is I’ve yet to see another handheld with touchpads that can even begin to rival the Steam Deck’s.
AYANEO has them on the Retro Mini PC but they’re smaller and way too far down to be comfortable to use regularly.
The touchpads are one of the Steam Deck’s greatest features. They actually make it enjoyable to play games designed for use with a mouse. Why are none of the other manufacturers getting that?
Those other manufacturers didn’t launch a new controller design. Valve did. It was fine and they learned how to make it great. Valve learned by experimenting with shape, button locations, track pads themselves were entirely new; it must have been a wild time in those hardware labs.
The funny thing is that reviews at the time mentions the track pad as being inspired but under baked on the Steam controller. Valve iterated and came up with something great. AYANEO just had their first attempt. Let’s see how much they learn.