Steam Hardware

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A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.

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Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading (www.gamingonlinux.com)

submitted 2 days ago by cm0002@lemy.lol to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Valve released a new Steam Deck Beta update that includes a useful tweak to its Xbox controller detection.

There's a bit of a problem with modern Xbox controllers and Bluetooth, where they won't properly connect up with SteamOS / Linux unless they've gone through a firmware update. I've seen a lot of support requests about this issue over the years and so it's good to see Valve highlight it directly. While it's a Steam Deck Beta Client update, it should apply to other SteamOS devices too.

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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There are definitely ways to send backwards compatible data when required and separately support additional features in a new iteration of an API. This wouldn't be in the top 10 backwards compatibility challenges MS has figured out.

But in any case, I don't care if they call it XInput2 or Game Input. I just need it to support all controller features in all games. It's a bit hard to tell whether Game Input will ever do that, but so far it seems more concerned with acting as a layer to explicitly support a bunch of different hardware, each with its own standards, than a XInput replacement for controllers. There doesn't seem to be a concept for a "Game Input controller" there at all, actually, just supported controllers you can listen for regardless of what they're sending through.

I guess over time if they stick with it and it does end up working as a Steam Input-style intermediary layer that just recognizes anything you'd just ship controllers that match whatever format with gyro support and Game Input-enabled games would just pick them up fine more or less universally, but that doesn't seem to be what it does right now, or at least not something that either games or manufacturers are relying upon.

Anyway, this was interesting and informative, but I think I'm good now. I definitely don't want to have a conversation formatted as an argument in which nobody is disagreeing with anybody else. Those are exhausting.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

Agreed :)

And no matter how they do it, it's clear they need to make changes; "everything is an Xbox controller and now just works" actually was pretty nice solution 20 years ago to fix the complicated mess that was PC gamepads with DirectInput, but it is very much outdated idea today.

Thankfully it appears changes are happening that might solve the issue in the near future, and all we can really do is wait and see.