There has been a lot of questions regarding Steam’s new controller, pictured above. The controller will use two trackpads instead of traditional buttons that can be fully customized by developers, the idea is that it will allow users to play RTS games, as well as ‘traditional’ controller games just fine. Of course SEGA would like the opportunity to bring their massive successful PC games into the living room. But how does it control?

“It’s very much still in beta. It’s rough around the edges and there are functions missing. The first thing I noticed is that it feels very light, and the left hand touchpad movement feels very natural. It is incredibly fluid and intuitive right from the off. The right hand touchpad, which would normally handle your looking movements, was frantic and incredibly sensitive. It was tricky, but if you hone it down and manage the sensitivity, I am sure it will be better. You can tell pro-gamers will use this in tournaments.” – Digital distribution director James Schall

SEGA managed to win over brand director for Total War, Rob Bartholomew who came into Valve questioning the idea for the controller. He said after 10 minutes he was won over with the possibilities they can accomplish with the new pad.

“Even with the default set-up and tweaking a few button configurations on the fly, we managed to play ROME II within minutes. I can’t imagine it would take long at all for us to develop a recommended set-up that would interface well with Total War. The genius being of course that no one user would need to be stuck with that, they could adapt and share their own controller preferences as they liked.” – Total War brand director, Rob Bartholomew

One of the biggest things they all talked about was that they want to see it in consumers hands. How cheap will the controller be? Will PC gamers even want this controller? Well, according to Rob Bartholomew, it is ‘exciting that there are real, affordable, well-supported alternatives to traditional consoles‘. How affordable is affordable to the average consumer? Are you planning on picking up a Steam controller?