Back in November 2025, Valve revealed an entire suite of new gaming hardware, led by the Steam Machine. Initially, the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame and the Steam Controller were supposed to launch simultaneously in early 2026, but that didn't happen. Due in large part to the ongoing RAM crisis, the Steam Machine and its accompanying controller and VR headset were delayed. However, Valve has finally announced that it's just going to release the Steam Controller on May 4 for $99, so that it can get into the hands of gamers.
While we have a review of the upcoming controller, we were also able to sit down with Valve Programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais and Engineer Steve Cardinali to discuss the controller and the decision to release it on its own. And it sounds like you can at least get a head start on the Steam Machine experience, even if you have to use a different computer for a while.
IGN: I am joined here with Pierre-Louis and Steve from Valve. Thank you guys for joining me today. Could you go ahead and introduce yourselves and tell us what you're working on?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: Sure. Yeah. So I'm Pierre-Loup Griffais, and I work here on the platform side at Valve. So I've been working on developing SteamOS and our various hardware initiatives over the years.
Steve Cardinali: I'm Steve Cardinali. I'm a hardware engineer. I'm primarily a mechanical engineer. I've been working on the Steam Controller, getting it from inception through mass production.
IGN: So to start off, we're obviously talking about Steam Controller today. One of the things I want to ask about is, there's a lot of different factors that go into what you consider a pro controller, a high end controller. From y'all's perspective, what do you consider the essential features?
Cardinali: Yeah, I mean, for us, we want to provide as many advanced inputs as possible so people can just play their games the way they want. In particular, both gyro and trackpads are something we find really important for these advanced feature controllers. They're a high skill ceiling input that you can use to get really high performance in competitive games, but also when you're playing casual games like deck builders, they just give you another way to play that's really comfy.
IGN: A lot of comparable high-end PC controllers often cost in the neighborhood of upwards of $150 or $200. So how were you able to get the price down to $99 despite all of the fancy tech that's worked into the Steam Controller?
Cardinali: Yeah, a lot of it was discipline around what we include and don't include. We kind of had one of these guiding principles that we wanted it to have input parity with the Steam Deck for the most part. People are playing their Steam deck and then going in with a controller, we want it to feel really familiar.
That helped us keep things pretty even-keel on not throwing in a whole bunch of things that would add costs. But on top of that, there's a lot of thoughtful engineering and design that goes into it to make sure that we're delivering the best possible value at the price point we're delivering to give people just a lot of different opportunities.
IGN: You mentioned the trackpads. Do you have any data about the use of the track pads? I'm really curious if people are actually using them to play games a lot or is it mostly for desktop navigation or something else?
Griffais: Yeah, we end up getting quite a bit of feedback, but it's more indirect. In general, we don't collect a lot of data on what people do and don't do on Steam directly, but we try and stay tuned to all sorts of feedback. We've seen the track pads being used for a lot of gameplaying, camera controls for third person and first person games.
Also, assigning radial and virtual menus on the left track pad for playing games that are designed for mouse and keyboard with a lot of hot keys. That's a pretty important use case for them. Obviously, getting through launchers, controlling your desktop is pretty important, but by and large, I think people are using it in game.
IGN: I just always wonder if anybody's actually trying to play something like Crusader Kings or an RTS or something that really needs mouse find mouse control.
Griffais: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. People have been playing those kinds of games. Even before for the original Steam controller, and then all the Steam input layer with normal controllers, then Steam Deck and now the new Steam Controller, you see a lot of community configurations from folks that have created their own way of playing those games.
But definitely the controllers, like the Deck controller and the new Steam Controller, to have a track pad have been really good experiences, to be able to take those games that are designed for mouse keyboard and play them in other rooms of the house. I think we've seen good success from that.
IGN: So speaking of the other rooms, can you guys give me an update on Steam Machine and Steam Frame? Is there an updated timeline?
Griffais: Yeah, we don't have exact details about the timeline to share today. And we're hard at work on trying to get them out the door. I think we are definitely expecting to roll out some news soon about that, but in general, I think things are going well.
The Steam Controller definitely is a building block for something like the Steam Machine, the experience of the Steam Machine is going to, especially for things like Steam Machine verified and the out-of-box process definitely is a more seamless experience with a Steam controller. But we definitely expect that the controller is also a product that stands on its own, that's going to have many users that are just normal PC desktop users where it'll be a good additive option for them.
IGN: So obviously Steam Controller is built for PC or machines running Steam. Was there ever a consideration for trying to get console support for, say, Xbox, PS5 or even just Switch, and getting those to work? I mean, a lot of those systems, they just support Bluetooth. And so the Steam Controller has Bluetooth obviously, but I tried connecting it and it unsurprisingly did not work. So I'm curious if you've ever had that as a consideration or if it's something that you would consider on a V2.
Griffais: Yeah, that was not really a goal for us, because those controllers, or at least those platforms, they have a pretty fixed expectation of what they consider to be a controller. If you're an Xbox or a PlayStation licensed controller, you have a very specific set of controls and a very specific API that you're using to communicate with games.
And because we have those extra features, those APIs in a sense don't really let you express the full potential of the Steam Controller. And so for us, yeah, it's very much intended to be paired with Steam or other client applications that talk to Steam, like remote play on your mobile devices, or from a thin client, smart TV, those kinds of things if you don't have a full PC running Steam.
That being said, we have done a lot of work to make sure that you can add any third party app that you're using outside of Steam to Steam so that you can benefit from that whole layer of configuration. So that you can just add your games to Steam and still use the controller to its full potential.
On platforms where Steam's not running, like you mentioned some consoles and other types of PCs and non-PC devices, we have a baseline level of functionality where the controller acts as a kind of a mouse and keyboard. So you can use that to get through your BIOS screens or get through whatever you need, but at the end of the day, the core experience is intended for using with Steam.
IGN: So tell me what's happening with Steam Deck. I've noticed that it's been out of stock for a good bit. Can we expect that more stock on Steam Deck is coming back and on what time frame?
Griffais: Yeah, we don't really have any specific details to share about that, but it's something we're working hard on. And as you are aware, there's a lot of considerations right now with respect to shipping being difficult, and also memory shortages and all that. So we've been trying to work through that because we are very cognizant of the fact that there's folks that want to get Steam Deck and they're not currently able to get it. It's available in some regions right now, but in general, it's something that we're working very hard on.
IGN: You mentioned the RAM shortage. What steps is Valve taking to mitigate costs as we're dealing with this RAM shortage for both Steam Deck, forthcoming Steam Machine and other places where it affects your hardware?
Griffais: We're trying to make sure to keep options open and to work with as many different manufacturers as we can. I think in general, that's something that we're doing throughout our hardware design and production phase where we're always cognizant of the fact that having a single source for a given part would put us downstream of potential shortages, and things like that in a way that affects the continuity of the supply and the price for end users.
So from the get-go, we've been trying to make sure that we have many options there, and that's been proving really useful in this kind of climate, because we can work with all the big players and some of the smaller ones as well. That being said, the conditions around memory are pretty global right now, so there's only so much that we can do. But for example, there was a similar condition during the COVID times where there's a microcontroller shortage and people couldn't really build anything that had small chips.
So every sector from automotive to consumer PCs was affected by that. And because we had so many different options open in terms of putting different types of microcontrollers in there, we were able to navigate that and keep some supply in a climate where maybe some other players were not able to do that. So we expect to be navigating the memory thing the same way.
IGN: It sounded originally like the Steam Controller, Steam Machine and potentially even Frame were all planned to launch at the same time, and now we have the controller coming out before the others. Is the delay for the Steam Machine solely due to the RAM shortage? And is it basically just a price thing or is there another factor? Is it just not ready yet that is keeping it from hitting the market?
Griffais: In terms of details about what's going on with Machine, that's not quite what we're trying to talk about today. But in general, I would say that there's not an arbitrary consideration about tying product launches together or anything like that. For us, the controller is something that stands out on its own and we want to make sure that we can get that to customers in parallel to anything that might be happening with Steam Machine.
I think doing it in the other order would've been harder. The Machine is harder to ship out without a controller, but the controller is definitely something that we think is going to be primarily used by an audience on normal desktop PC. And it's going to be great for Steam Machine, Steam Deck and all these other things, but at the end of the day, I think the folks that are going to just be getting it to use on their PC are going to be the primary audience for it.
And so we want to make sure that we can get it into their hands as soon as possible, as soon as it's ready basically without having to wait for any other factors there. But in terms of Steam Machine, yeah, it's really just about the logistics of getting it into user's hands. I think if you've used the Steam Deck docked, the experience is pretty much there. It's that plus some more GPU horsepower. Of course, there's a ton of polish and other feature work that we can do, but at the end of the day, the core experience is there.
And the key thing that is making it not launched yet is really just about the logistics of finishing it up in terms of supply and getting it to user's hands.
IGN: I'd love to hear what are the sort of wildest or coolest usages of the touchpad that you've seen. What are the most creative implementations that people have come up with?
Griffais: Yeah, we'll probably both have an answer for that because we've seen a ton of different things. But in general, I think folks that are able to play games with many different hotkeys is always pretty impressive. What you can do with nested menus and modifier keys to have a game that has 30 hot keys still fully playable with the controller.
Speaking anecdotally, I have a kid that plays a lot of Factorio and seeing what he can do with the track pad on his Steam Deck is pretty impressive to me. But I don't know, Steve, have you seen or experienced any wild uses there?
Cardinali: One of the things that we've been working on is a how-to guide for using Steam input configurator as well as the track pads. And in that process, me and my desk neighbor, we were trying to see all the stuff that we can hook up and just the fact that you can make a radial menu on your trackpad with 20 inputs, and then action set that ,so that in different contexts it does different things.
It's like to PL's point, you can have so much functionality built into a trackpad. It's pretty crazy. That being said, one of my favorite uses of it, which is really not putting it through its paces, is I use the right track pad as mouse and the left trackpad as mouse click, left and right, I split it as a D-pad down the middle. And you can play pretty much any casual deck builder game that's meant for just clicking and dragging a mouse so comfortably just by doing that simple input.
And that's kind of the opposite of your question there, but it's another really interesting use that we found when we were just kind of messing around in the early days.
IGN: Yeah, I appreciate that it has all of these really advanced use cases that can be unlocked if you want to, but you're not sacrificing the experience to get there and it just works well out of the box. That's what I've found using it.
Griffais: For us, that was one of the core goals of the new Steam Controller, is to be a traditional controller first and foremost, that has all the inputs that you need to play all the games that are designed for controller, in the places that your fingers will expect them. So it's all that you need from a normal controller and then all those advanced inputs that can be used to play basically the whole catalog are there if you need them, but they're not in the way.
IGN: Well, last thing, because I have to ask, what can you tell me about Steam Deck 2?
Griffais: We're hard at work on it. And obviously every step of the way, if you look at our harder projects over the years, you can draw a straight line from original Steam Controller and Steam Machines to Steam Deck to everything that we're announcing and shipping this year. And we expect Steam Deck to will be a lot of the same where a lot of what we're doing here will be learnings that build up to it.
Bo Moore is IGN's Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
