If you’ve got a PS4 lying around, chances are you’ve got a few controllers to go with it. And if you also happen to have a gaming PC, then you’ll know the occasional frustration that sometimes comes with support for Sony’s gamepad — at least compared to the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, which work perfectly.
But no more. At the Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle, Valve announced that they were adding native support for Sony’s controller — with added functionality to boot.
Daniel Ahmad, an analyst at Niko Partners, tweeted out photos earlier this morning of the DualShock 4 more or less being completely customisable:
Given that just about everything you’d want to play with a DS4 on PC runs through Steam anyway, it’s a fantastic move on Valve’s part. And funnily enough, it really wasn’t that hard.
According to Valve’s Jeff Bellinghausen, the PS4 controller has a lot of physical overlap with the Steam controller. “When you use the PS4 Controller through the Steam API, it’s exactly the same as a Steam Controller,” he wrote. “You make the exact same API calls, you only get actions, not inputs, and the Steam API takes care of everything.”
The company was also motivated by the fact that “existing native support for the PS4 controller on the PC is a bit weak”. Communicating with the controller directly makes things a lot easier, and a lot more reliable than relying on homebrew third party drivers.
The DS4 support will be patched into Steam later this year.
Comments
10 responses to “Steam Is Adding Full Support For The DualShock 4”
niiiiiiiice!!! great news to start the day. I’m sick of joy2key, and i really like using the trackpad on the ds4 for my pc games! (hello divinity: os-ee)
Hallelujah!!!
Sing it from the mountain tops!!!
Hear hear!! What a great bit of news to start the day!
Excellent… although I’ll have to make sure one of the PS4 controllers isn’t paired to the PS4 or that’ll get very annoying…
Retiring the Logitech F710 sounds good to me.
This is actually amazing. GGWP
Steam has actually had native support for the DS4 and DS3 for some time in their Linux client.
This is due to the linux kernel having drivers for the controllers.
Welcome, windows gamers, to the future! 😀
If the future means compatability with only a minority of games on steam the future sucks.
Well Linux has always faced a chicken and egg dilemma with gaming, but steam have really showed that changing. In 2012 it was 0 games, now it is over 2,500.
Also, of the top 100 rated games on steam, 57% are on Linux. Of the top 1000 rated games, 42% are on Linux.
So, things are heading in a good direction in that regard.
As for the future of various operating systems, well as someone who cares about open computing and particularly gaming, I can honestly say I don’t think the future of windows is a bright one.
As a Linux user for almost 20 years now. We were saying that back then as well, there was some reasom to think that at times as well. Games like LinQuake ran faster under linux than DOS. Although we didn’t have nice Linux versions of games. We had to get them to work ourselves through emulation or coding, though with LinQuake the community made a great front-end, DirectX was at the time almost a nail in the coffin for Linux gaming. I’m glad to see there is a larger library of games with official Linux ports now, but it’s not going to be a windows killer. Ease of use, familiarity and compatability windows always wins out.
Linux has its users who like myself now days mainly use it for specific reasons. As a do all generic general purpose desktop they still do have a ways to go. The main problem is they have been that way for so long. There lies one of the problems of open community. There is no one central leadership to control the direction of advancement, it’s groups of people all doing there own thing. Ubuntu was a good attempt for a variant, it never personally took off with me, but there is no clear direction where they want to go.
I use linux and BSD for all of my desktops, laptops and servers at work and home. While I’m a power user, my wife’s laptop runs linux as does my fathers desktop. There isn’t anything they can’t do on the system as a “generic general purpose” OS.
Any lack of compatibility isn’t a problem of linux, it is a problem of reliance on proprietary formats and software vendors which lock their software to a single OS. Governments and schools around the world are starting to see the problems with a reliance on locked-down formats and are moving to open standards. Once you start to educate kids [and adults] that PC’s aren’t just Windows + Office, things will start to change.
I also don’t see Windows remaining as nice of a place for gaming as it currently is. While they are currently open in regards to software which is able to be installed, I guarantee they are looking to lock it down to a walled-garden environment similar to the iOS model. MS has a vested interest, and heavy investment, in gaming. Steam is undeniably the king of PC gaming and they see not a single dollar from it. That will change, which is one of the reasons they are investing so much time and effort into SteamOS. Sure, from the point of view of most users, it’s nowhere near ready, but they are putting the effort into making it something familiar and not-scary for the average user.
I also don’t see your problem with open communities as a problem at all. That’s the benefit of an open computing environment. Locking down an OS and having all control of how it is run in the hands of a corporation is not a good place to be in at all.
Most excellent!