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I'm skeptical that the trackpads will provide the same precision feel that a good analog stick can do, even with the haptics. But I'm not going to count it out. I'll reserve all judgement until I get to try it. And that's the only real sticking point for me on this announcement; everything else about this controller I love.
Looks effing comfy.
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I'd have agreed with you once, but I broke the trackpad on a ThinkPad a couple of years ago and out of apathy i switched to the nipple mouse and I haven't looked back. It takes more practice but it has excellent precision and infinite movement. The trackpad remains broken and unplugged.
Use an Apple trackpad and you'll never want to use the ThinkPad/Lenovo eraser nubs ever again.
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Speaking on innovation, the Xbox 360 came out with a brand new controller, but the Xbox One has practically the same controller? It's like they didn't take any time to re-evaluate the controller with the new console. For that matter, the PS4 controller is the same except with a small touchpad in the middle.
In their defense the 360's controller is considered an amazing controller already, so I understand them only making incremental improvements.
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I hate touchpads. I use an external mouse with my Macbook. I have a Dell D830 with the nub pointer and it was so much easier to use, especially considering that you don't have to remove your hands from the keyboard and your finger doesn't need to cross 3 inches of space to move across the screen.
I've always been confused by this argument. I can reach my trackpad with my right thumb without moving any of my other fingers off of the home row. Is this an unusual amount of flexibility?
I mean, given the option of a physical mouse, I will always prefer that over both nub and track pad -- and the physical mouse requires the most movement away from the keyboard (of course, to avoid all three mouse input methods I use keyboard shortcuts when possible).
Anyway, my reasons for preferring the nub are:
* Less movement required on the actual input device. Just a slight tilt of the finger can move the mouse cursor from anywhere to anywhere else.
* Higher accuracy. This one may be subjective, only personal applicable, and/or biased, but I think the nub just makes it so much easier to navigate compared to the touch pad.
I'm skeptical and I'm going to stay that way until I actually get to try it because of the haptic feedback, but.. The face button layout also gets to me. That's going to require some serious mental gymnastics to re-wire 20+ years of face button layout muscle memory to use this in some games (edit: especially platformers).
I'm thinking Valve basically wrote off retrogaming with this device - it's after the modern genres that are completely split between the PC-style mouse-and-keyboard and the console-style thumbsticks-and-shoulders. A retrogaming pad would be nice as an additional peripheral to sell, but realistically you can use any existing bluetooth gamepad with Steam.
Somehow, I never actually imagined two trackpads – my concept had always been a D-pad on the left and a trackpad on the right, mimicking the traditional mouse-and-keyboard setup of the PC first-person shooter, but this makes far more sense and allows for much more flexible repurposing of controls to different games (as well as letting left-handed gamers flip their controls).
This is, at last, the controller for FPS games, and more importantly, for the next generation of non-shooter first-person games. It's amazing to see the horrified backlash in the comments sections on gaming sites right now: People just don't get that this isn't for the button-heavy games they already play; it enables new interactions with new kinds of environment-based experiences.
I wasn't particularly interested in any of Valve's announcements earlier this week, but they certainly have my attention now.
I've played some FPS games with a trackpad for lack of having a mouse available, and on a larger, higher precision one (e.g., Macbook size) it was not a bad experience at all. You can move a finger a lot faster than a whole arm. Reflex high-res motion at the pro Counter-Strike level isn't likely, but for the casual gamer, trackpad FPS control absolutely seemed plausible. So I believe this kind of input will work for…
While I might be slightly more accurate at aiming with my mouse, actually moving around with a controller is considerably better for me. To each their own.
