14 DAY TRIAL // Jeff Bellinghausen, a leading engineer at Valve, says that the new haptic controller that the company is working on will perform very well in most games when compared to a traditional keyboard and mouse setup, but will be unsuited for pro DOTA 2 players.
He tells Polygon in an interview that, “It’s a real challenge. It’s also something that’s pushing the performance and resolution of the trackpad. For a game like Dota, we’re probably not going to be able to match it perfectly. You’re not going to take a pro players and have him play at his level with the controller, but that’s not really the goal.”
The Steam controller has a legacy mode which allows a player to customize his experience with the new device in order to emulate traditional controls for a wide range of games.
Valve also plans to launch a special API for the new hardware, which will allow developers to make their own tweaks and improve the controller performance by creating separate profiles based on player feedback.
But Bellinghausen adds, “Certainly something like Dota has a sophistication to it that is going to be challenging. We’re thinking we’ll get 90% of the way there.”
The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena title is a fast experience that tests the reactions of players as much as their long-term thinking, and tournament matches are often decided by small factors that can include controller use.
Despite the fact that some top-level players will continue to work with a mouse and keyboard setup, Valve hopes that the vast majority of gamers will give its Steam haptic controller a try.
A number of developers have already said that they like the device that they were able to test and improvements are still being made ahead of the official launch.
The Steam machines, the haptic controller and the SteamOS will all be officially released in 2014.