The Steambox prototypes have been released into the wild to 300 lucky participants, and that means we slowly but surely get to learn more not only about the console, but the mysterious controller itself.
Just looking at it could raise a few eyebrows. After all, there are no analog sticks to be seen. According to Jimo, one of the lucky 300, he stated that playing various games like TF2 was a bit difficult with the Steam controller at first, especially since the game's aren't built for it like they are for the Xbox 360 controller. However, after some tweaking in the configuration tools, the game became much easier to play.
It wasn’t until I started creating my own controller bindings that I discovered how configurable the Steam Controller actually is. I was not aware that you could adjust the blending or the dead zone settings. I also didn’t know you could change the style of input from a 4-way directional to an 8-way directional, allowing it to hold eight key bindings on a single pad.
As you can see on the screenshot taken by Jimo, it looks like every aspect of the controller can be customized, including both pads, as well as the dead zone on each one. This is pretty important since gamers will have to use the pads in place of d-pads and even trackpads for mouse movement.
