Valve’s Steam Controller is far and away the most versatile gamepad you can buy right now. Not only is it built on the most automated assembly line in the US, but its dual touchpads and internal gyroscopes make it useful outside games.
Interested? Good. Because after a long wait Valve will finally start shipping the Steam Controller and Steam Link directly to Australia very soon.
That little tidbit was announced at a Valve Steam Dev Days session by Jeff Bellinghausen, an engineer working on the Controller. Valve thinks that it’ll sell a million Steam Controllers by early 2017, and Australia is part of that push alongside eastern Europe, south-east Asia, Latin America and other Oceania regions… except New Zealand. According to Bellinghausen some of these regions can buy the Controller already, and the rest will spin up “over the next few months”.
It’s not yet confirmed just how much the Steam Controller will cost for Aussies, but you can take a rough guess based on its $US49.99 price and $10 international shipping fees, which at current exchange rates translates into about $80. If it’s more than $100, we’ll be spitting chips.
Also being sold alongside the Steam Controller will be the Steam Link, a network-attached streaming box that can mirror games from your desk-bound gaming PC onto a big-screen TV in another room over Wi-Fi or a wired connection. All the hardware and protocols for Steam Link will also be integrated directly into future Samsung TVs, too, so that’s a good reason to splash some cash out on a complete home cinema upgrade.
The entire Dev Days chat that talks about how game devs can best implement all the (potentially confusing) inputs that the Steam Controller makes possible is actually really interesting. It’s targeted at developers, obviously, but it’s worth a read if you’re thinking about getting one and building your own customised input profile — something that’s already been done by gamers 1.2 million times since the Controller launched.
Comments
19 responses to “Valve Will Sell The Steam Controller In Australia (Soon)”
I bought mine from amazon, i think it was only about $60aud total with delivery
Did they explain why it’s been delayed releasing in Australia for so long?
Steam link is great, I got mine from Amazon for $80AUD delivered and it came with Aussie power plugs right out of the box. Well worth the money.
I’m still not sold on the Controller though.
too late in my opinion,
I gave up and bought a xbone and wifi module because i was tired of waiting, now i wont be buying one because i have already invested in the xbone setup
Was interested till ds4 support for steam was announced.
Yeah the wife got me one a little while ago, I think from Amazon.
It’s pretty neat, there is a huge array of configuration options for the thing, but sometimes I still struggle to find one that works well. The left pad can be configured to be used as like 12 or so separate buttons, plus a few other neat features. They’ve put a lot of effort into designing this thing.
I got a Steam Link also, so I can stream games to the TV in the lounge room, where this controller really shines. Latency is very low and hardly noticeable with an Ethernet connection. Steam Link is unplayable over WiFi.
Had mine for ages.
Can’t stand it.
Yep, I keep seeing comments that you have to use it for some time to get used to it and put the work in… well, I’ll take your word for it. After a couple hours I was done and I went back to my xbone controller for PC gaming.
Too little, too late for me im afraid.
I was very interested in this last year but it just took too long to get here so I lost interest,
Why would they not ship to NZ?!? I’d assume shipping costs but surely the demand for it down here would outway them. I’m sure that the demand would even outweigh the demand in parts of East Aisa.
Bizzare…
with the launch of CIV VI out soon was thinking about getting one from Amazon. For as much as I want to play that game, these days I couldnt be bothered spends hours at a tiny computer screen.
I thought EB Games were going to be selling the controller & link eventually. Whatever happened to that..?
I’ve been using mine for about a year and love it, it’s my default for everything.
It takes a little bit of getting used to at first, but once you do, it’s hard to not love it.
xbox 360 controller all the way!
You owe it to yourself to get an xbone controller, way better! I can’t go back to 360 controllers now.
yeah, i have played with them, i didnt rate them enough of an improvement to go out and replace my 360 controller though.
i bought 4 xbox 360 controllers for PC at $30 each on a sale, so they’ll definitely last me a few years before the last one cacks it
The dpad on the 360 controller is way too mushy for me
The Xb1 dpad is perfect, so I’m happy with that.
its all subjective. like i said, i didnt rate the xb1 controller enough of an improvement over the 360 to warrant replacing them all. i barely use the dpad in the games i play anyway. mainly retro games ill use it and for that its fine.
too late, good luck to them.