Love how, every year, gaming hardware is getting harder and harder to acquire. 👍
Well…
https://www.pcgamesn.com/pc-retro-tech/ega-graphics
Pity the poor PC of 1983-1984, before EGA graphics changed everything. It wasn’t the graphics powerhouse we know today. IBM’s machines, such as the IBM PC 5150, and their clones might have been the talk of the business world, but they were stuck with text-only displays or low-definition bitmap graphics.
The maximum color graphics resolution was 320 x 200 on a CGA graphics card, with colors limited to four from a hard-wired palette of 16. Even at the time, you’d have a hard time convincing someone that this was really the best graphics card you could buy. Worse, three of those colors were cyan, brown, and magenta, and half of them were just lighter variations of the other half.
You can see in the screenshot from The Secret of Monkey Island below that 16 colors make all the difference, with EGA on the left and four-color CGA on the right.
However, EGA had one big problem; it was prohibitively expensive, even in an era when PCs were already astronomically expensive. The basic EGA card price was over $500 (around $1,400 today), and the Memory Expansion Card cost a further $199.
Go for the full 192KB of RAM and you were looking at a total of nearly $1,000 (approximately $2,900 in today’s money), making a top-end EGA card way more expensive than the GeForce RTX 4090 today. What’s more, the monitor you needed to make the most of it cost a further $850 (approximately $2,500 today). EGA was a rich enthusiast’s toy.
Yes, pioneering new tech is rough but that’s pretty different than where we’re at now.
Many people would be ecstatic to build a locost rig that’s a couple generations out of date but even THAT hardware is obscenely priced.
Manfs are literally reviving previous-gen hardware and down-speccing their current offerings to try to ease pricing increases—shit’s fucked.Edit: Oh and scalpers. Scalpers too.
Yeah, but my 386 had a turbo button!
My first computer was a ZX81 with a mighty 1k RAM. Didn’t do much with it. Then I got a Sinclair spectrum with 48k, you could do a lot with that. That’s when gaming got good for me.
They don’t call it HARDware for nothin!
The hobby is becoming more mainstream and nobody is willing to manufacture so much that there’s a massive risk of losses if it doesn’t sell.
Also, AI. Also, late stage capitalism.
I’m still extremely sour about having one in my cart within 30 seconds of the page going live but the checkout process just failing.
Man I even got thru checkout but then discovered on the orders page it was still pending. Ended up getting cancelled so some scalpers probably already got mine.
Just to try to understand how bad this is, I reserved mine on May 8 at 18:48:30 +0000 (UTC) no email so far.
Did someone that reserved received an email? If yes, when did you reserve and when did you receive the email to order your controller?
I set an alarm on May 8th the moment they opened reservations. Got an email on June 11th asking for me to confirm my purchase details and submit an order. Submitted that day and then received the controller on June 17th.
If you check the reserve link it says it expects I’ll be able to buy one in September.
Same here, I’m surprised that some that ordered at the same day that I did are already with their devices. Have you ordered yours on May 8th as well?
I just ordered mine this morning.
do you mind to share your ETD offered by steam?
Didn’t receive one but presumably if they took the order it means it’s in stock and will be shipped out right away so, probably a few days? I’ll try to report back when I received it.
deleted by creator
Received today, so ~6 days
How many of those are scalpers though?
A queue system really undercuts any scalper that would consider the controller a good target. There will of course be people without patience that could payout, but the larger market will just wait until their turn to order comes up. Seems like a bad investment for someone that relies on FOMO to profit.
When they initially went on sale, apparently scalpers flooded the thing. They put a reservation system in place for the Steam Controller to aim to defeat scalping. This new shortage is with that reservation system in place, limit on two Steam Controllers per account and the Steam account needs to be in good standing. Now, I guess it could be possible that scalpers went out and figured out how to defeat that, like having a number of people collude to purchase two each, so one can’t say that there’s no scalping…
EDIT: It looks like the going rate on eBay for a sealed-box Steam Controller 2.0 is about $300, so I imagine that that’s what market rate is at current levels of supply. Some lower prices get down towards $200. Valve’s selling them for $99.
I didn’t see their email to purchase - missed by a day. I’m now in the 2027 club 😅
I don’t need one, but the trackpads would make certain things a bit easier. Oh well.
this makes me wonder about the steam machine rollout
Valve was really dumb on the launch of the Steam Controller, without requiring anything and every bot and scalper could buy as many as they want. I can’t believe they did not have any protection on! This is a major part in shortage of the Controllers I think. They had all the knowledge and tools learned from the Steam Deck launch. So… what I mean is Valve is handling the launch of Steam Machine differently then they did with the first batch of Steam Controller. Also the price is much higher and is no longer in the “impulse buy 2 of 'em” category.
And yet, I will be wrong, followed by a Steam Machine shortage.^^
You needed a Steam account of a certain age and some activity in the past. Sure, people immediately tried to resell them at ridiculous prices, but look up how many were offered and bought on eBay. It’s a drop in the bucket. What they did fuck up was severely underestimating the demand. It shows that they usually deal with digital products.
For the launch of Steam Controller there was no restrictions on the Steam account of age or activity. After they got surprised, with the second batch next week, they started to implement the same account restrictions as they did on Steam Deck. And I believe the orders of first batch was the majority of controllers they had planned to sell in isolation without the Steam Machine and Frame. Now they have to restock and try to fill the demand that they also understimated.
The reason why you didn’t see much on eBay was, because they were mass reported quickly from the Steam community. Because eBay has some rules that does not allow them sell products they don’t yet have.
I feel bad for anyone wanting one and not getting it. It feels so painful to read those comments. :-(
Me, playing in my 5 year old 50€ Nintendo switch pro controller in PC because it didn’t pay for itself:
Well maybe in 5 years I will buy one.
The initial launch and first batch of Steam Controller was … wait for it… “uncontrolled” badum tsh.
I reserved mine back in May and haven’t received an email about it. Their announcement made it sound like I should expect something in '26 but when I look at my estimated time, it says not until '27. >:[
I had it on my wish list but decided to wait for the steam machine and see what the total out the door price for the console and controller would be. Unfortunately now the console is nowhere to be found and the controllers are back ordered until next year.
I was gifted an Xbox Elite 2 controller years ago and have already had to take it apart to lube up the bumper buttons. It’s a fine controller but they fail at an insanely high rate for the price. Bummer that the Steam Controller couldn’t get out the door on time.
Kind of shocked, tbh. Their last controllers were pretty awful. I have two. I used them maybe 3 times before settling on PS/XBox controllers. And I’m not even a console gamer. I just bought a few PS and Xbox controllers cuz the Steam controller felt cheap and awkward.
I am not shocked to be honest.
Sure the first steam controller wasn’t great, but it was unique and provided controller access to games that just didn’t work with them. I hated mine for controller games, but was nice to sit back and relax on something slower that required mouse input (think a management game).
Then they followed up with the steam deck, which is ridiculously good.
The lessons learnt from the original and the fact that this provides a fantastic experience for standard controller and non controller games makes this an easy recommendation.
It is the best overall controller for me, 2nd in comfort to hold(the PS5 controller sits slightly better in my hands), but 1st in comfort to use(I like the high places sticks) couple that with the rest of the features and if you want a really good controller and have uses for the touch pads it is worth every penny.
If you are never going to use the touchpads or even attempt to use them, then get something more traditional like an 8-bit do ultimate or something.
And not to say it is perfect, but I think there are only 2 minor things I would like in a revision. Slightly more textured grips/back, and trigger stops(although I don’t think I will ever use them personally I know people would like them).
Agreed
I’m not a huge fan of how this controller looks
Looks < Feels
In general, one can swap in custom outer shells for controllers if one has a particular look in mind; there are stores that sell these.
In the case of the Steam Controller 2, Valve published the CAD files for the outer shell to actively try to encourage this, so I imagine that there will be replacement outer shells.
It’s a controller guys. There’s a hundred you can use on the PC.
None of them are a replacement for Steam Controller. I purchased one specifically because of the two trackpads, that I’m used to on my Steam Deck. I can use the same configuration on Steam Deck and Controller. Besides that, there are other technical reasons I’m not getting into. I have Xbox controllers and a modern 8bitdo Ultimate 2 Wireless Controller. I don’t want to play Steam games without a Steam Controller (or Deck) ever again!
Mhm thanks I have all those, they’re great and all, but this one is different
(It sounds like I’m being sarcastic but I do actually have two of all modern first party controllers including two original steam controllers and I am psyched for the eventual arrival of my updated steam controller yay)
After the free advertising in form of supply shortage news dies down, how long does it take them to double or tripple production and deliver much sooner?
Including the ordering, manufacturing, delivery, and setup of new fabrication machines for the assembly line, hiring and training the operators, renegotiating the contracts with suppliers and shipping companies… I’d wager it’s much longer than saying “make it so”. Even if every single part is outsourced to a different manufacturer, doubling the production output is never as simple as laypeople think.
