Not everybody around me. Nobody around me has ever mentioned a touchpad outside of threads about the touchpad. It's not a thing.
Everybody on Steam seems to be playing controller games on sticks, though. At least from the data Steam shares. Which matches reviews at the time (and later, when people had to pay attention to them on the Deck), the way games on Deck are put together by devs, the low sales of the Controller, the changes to the Vive controller, the lack of other hardware manufacturers doing dual touchpads and pretty much every other piece of info at scale we have beyond anecdote.
Man, online chatter sucks and does bad things to people. I think I'm done with this. Have fun with the dual pads Valve bestowed upon you. I don't need you to change your mind about their popularity, but man, there's going to be a Smithers moment for you at some point on something else and it sure would be good if you thought back to this.
Hah. Man, you were fuming about that one for a while, huh?
I said at the very tippy top of this thread that
I know some people swear by them, I just don't think they're worth the space they take up as a pointer device
and later
People who like these do tend to be loud and proud about it, so they stand out more
It's no surprise that there are people swearing by them loudly and proudly. In fact, there are more people doing that than the opposite, because most people just... you know, ignore the whole thing altogether and haven't through about the Steam Controller in a decade.
The reason I was pulling quotes for you is that you denied the touchpad reception in the OG Controller was mixed and that Valve was presenting them as a stick substitute, which was demonstrably incorrect.
It means official full controller support with the default config. There are few games that provide official controller support over Steam Input in the first place, even fewer that have any touchpad custom inputs by default and I'm not even sure if there are any that are Steam Verified. At a glance it's... what, just Rimworld again? Maybe some first party stuff left over from the Steam Machines fiasco? Sims is only Playable. Civ VII, which you called out earlier, I suspect incorrectly, has official all-stick support, what with having launched on consoles day and date. I haven't checked it because I haven't bought it yet, so if I'm wrong let me know. Civ VI doesn't have default controller support, but it's only Playable as well. In fact, if you have a list of verified games with touchpad default support I'd love to see it. I'm genuinely curious.
Look, you get to live in this very specific alternate reality where the only difference is people love dual touchpads as a main input system. That's fine, you're not hurting anybody. I get hung up on it because blatant misrepresentations on social media are fairly upsetting these days and because I'm still not over having had to use the dumb touchpads on the Vive for a couple of years back there.
But man, is it exhausting to watch it act as a proxy of some much more important crap in real time.
Hm. That is an interesting read, I don't know if I see it. For fast iGPUs it's been all AMD for a while. Nvidia has been threatening to build a faster one, but it seems they may be targeting integrated, fully branded devices for AI instead of gaming or general use.
Intel has started competing there, but so far it's not been a popular pick with handheld manufacturers.
My understanding is this generation there are more powerful parts but they're expensive to implement and they many not be as good at low wattages, but I guess we'll have to wait a while to know for sure. Either way I don't see a reason why there would be downward pressure on prices. Less upwards pressure than Nvidia just throwing a number at the 5080 and 5090 presumably selected from a bingo card, for sure, but still not necessarily down in price to performance.
Not most users, not even as Valve intended (on the Deck, at least).
They literally reserved the green "Verified" badge for games with full controller support and are the only ones eligible for the "Great on Deck" tab. Mouse and Keyboard games get the yellow "Playable" tag instead and a warning on boot.
See, that's the sad part about actually looking things up. It takes time, people get to nitpick it to death and then some guys will just... you know, say stuff.
It's a different measure because Valve does not disclose full install counts at all, let alone per hardware type, but it does provide concurrent users. I work with what I have. In any case, the top of the list is in the hundreds of thousands of concurrent users, so that does show that the top 100 on Deck does run the gamut until fairly low in usage. That's not a surprise, gaming is very winner-takes-all right now, particularly on PC. Steam user counts drop VERY quickly, so your argument that the top 500 is all huge is not accurate.
As for Civ VII, I was going off the last top 100 list, which is yearly and thus covering a period before the Civ VII launch, but Civ VI was actually there and I missed it. It shows up at 37. That's now 3% of the list that is mouse driven. I stand corrected. You're still wrong.
By the way, speaking of using different metrics, "trending" games aren't built on absolute numbers, so top played and trending don't line up at all. I'm assuming Civ VII will make the cut on Deck whenever it does get counted on absolute usage, though.
Nintendo has done backwards compatibility before, pretty extensively. The Switch 2 isn't a departure. They put a GBA cartridge slot in the first few Nintendo DSs (they lost it in the DSi), and the 3DS was backwards compatible with the DS. They also did GC to Wii and Wii to Wii U (but not GC to WiiU). They even put physical plugs for GC controllers and memory cards on the Wii.
And they've done weirder stuff, like the ability to use a GBA as a controller on the GameCube and some cross-save bonuses between games in some platforms.
The Game Gear is a weird example for that, specifically, since it was basically a repackaged Master System, so there was a lot of game crossover. Sega also had a widely advertised adapter that allowed the Mega Drive to play Master System games.
Anyway, nerdy retro gaming stuff aside, there is definitely a gradient across Valve, that is mostly driving a software platform across a ton of third party hardware, the 4K twins, which are relatively focused on service providing and Nintendo, which is somewhat more focused on a single platform, at least so far. It's very much not black and white and very much not a new thing, though.
And in any case, the smooth gradient does mean that ultimately it should be fair to at least compare Deck sales to console sales.
Granblue Relink is just about closing that top 100 and has about 650 players right now. That's not on Deck, that's across all of Steam.
That's a big birthday party, but not an all-timer.
I know what a radial menu is. The menu you sent is a nine square grid, which is a neutral spot surrounded by eight directional inputs. So a radial menu.
You can make other menus, but you just happened to send me a radial menu, specifically. Which I suspect was chosen there because, like I said, the small touchpad at best suits a radial menu or a directional menu.
And the point isn't that controller-first games are more popular, it's that mouse-first games are quite unpopular. Several big mouse-first games are in the overall most played list but not on the Deck list. Others appear lower. DOTA 2, for one, which is at the top of the overall and nowhere to be seen on the Deck top 100.
And yeah, when somebody argues something iffy in an online discussion I'm the kind of person to go and check. I don't mind being wrong that much, but I do want to know.
I mean, "MANY" in relation to, say, how many people would show up to someone's birthday party. Not "MANY" as in "the size of a videogame audience". We kinda know that for a fact. For reference, Steam does show the most played games on Deck. The first game with no official controller support shows up at 79. It's The Sims 4. For what it's worth, the two most used Steam Input configs do use the trackpads, but they just map the right one as a mouse and have the left one mapped to four directional functions. If your argument for the dual trackpads was simplicity, let me tell you, both of these configs are complete spaghetti, so I don't think that holds much water.
Rimworld is in there, suprisingly, in the 80s. Made me count all the way there, they should really put numbers on that list. Those seem to be the sole two mouse-driven entries. There are no RTS games, tycoon games or city builders that I can see.
In any case, you're right that we agree on whether playing strategy games on a touchpad is fun. It really is not.
By the way, you do realize your counter to the radial menu thing was a screenshot of a radial menu, right? The fact that it's using squares doesn't change how that works (except for how a grid layout actually fits fewer things than a radial menu, but that's neither here nor there).
Hah. You're overestimating the potential of 90s gaming devices. No game console, handheld or not, had sold a hundred million units. Hell, the Game Boy didn't crack into the hundreds until the Game Boy Color came around, and it was certainly the first.
Anyway, mild exaggeration aside, I get what you're aiming for, but I guess my question is why people read that positioning on Valve devices in the first place. There's no obvious indication that Valve is any less ambitious than any other first party, or any reason why they would be. They went to AMD and comissioned a custom APU at scale, just like Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft are doing. The only differentiating factor is they built the thing on top of a mostly usable pre-existing OS (which I suppose Microsoft also does, but hey). If anything their entire call to fame was to "consolize" Linux for SteamOS, which they'd been trying to do for a while anyway.
I agree that their goal is to set up an ecosystem that works for them, but I find it surprising that people assume they're disinterested in hardware sales. If I had to guess I'd say it's because they refuse to market too hard outside their own ecosystem, so their branding feels different than the more in-your-face releases of Sony, MS or Nintendo products and people assume that's because they're intrinsically or intentionally smaller, which I don't think is true. I do think that image is projected on purpose, though.
I have no idea where you saw me saying anything about "using a single touchpad" where I was agreeing with you. I said I wouldn't play those games on any touchpad, single or dual, haptic or not.
You also underestimate how powerful Steam Input is, weirdly. Chords, button combos and controller layers can be combined into surprisingly complex setups. Probably too complex, unless you like playing Steam Input more than you like playing your game, but definitely very capable of doing as much as the left pad. Which, by the way, can be mapped to a radial menu and that's about it. Let's not get crazy with our much real state you have on that thing, especially if you're trying to do anything time-sensitive.
And no, the argument isn't "stop having fun", the argument is "don't force games that aren't fun on a controller to be on a controller". I can't imagine having fun with a fast mouse-driven game on the tiny touchpad on the Deck, or even in the larger one on the Steam Controller. Or on a huge Macbook touchpad or on ANY touchpad. They don't need to be coaxed to work poorly on a mediocre replacement when they work great on the native control setup they're designed for. A few cases overlap enough to make things work well enough, but then the lack of an overengineered dual touchpad setup is not the limiting factor because there are so many alternatives in modern devices, from motion controls to touchscreens and paddles.
The touchpads were always a solution looking for a problem, even when controllers were a lot simpler. Now they're a sub-par solution looking for a problem.
Out of curiosity, what RTSs do you play on the Deck or the Steam Controller? Because I've tried that (it was 2015, I had just gotten a Steam Controller and didn't know any better) and it's one of the least pleasant gaming experiences I can imagine. Did you really do that on purpose or is this a hypothetical?
RTSs are unplayable on touchpads. I thought we agreed that touchpads aren't a good mouse replacement for anything requiring precision. Who is out there doing micro on Starcraft 2 on a Steam Controller?
And no, absolutely not true that side scrollers with aim controls need a touchpad. Bloodstained? Maps it to the right stick. Prince of Persia? Right stick. The entire Trine series? Right stick.
I hate when platformers require analogue inputs in the first place, because come on, you want to use a d-pad. But even then I can't think of a single example (since Abuse) that requires you to move and do analogue aim but won't support an analogue stick for that. The common name of top down games with free aim these days is "twin stick shooters", even. Nex Machina? Right stick. Minishoot? Right stick. Oooh, Knight Witch. Underrated. Right stick.
Rimworld, which I haven't played much, IS definitely a mouse and keyboard game. Same issue as with RTSs, though. I would absolutely not try to play that with a controller. Or a touchpad of any kind. Hell, the screen size would be a dealbreaker there.
We're looking for a bit of a unicorn here. It needs to be so coarse and slow that you can comfortably use a dual touchpad setup, but too cumbersome for a single touchpad or a touchscreen. Or somehow not supporting controllers but only for right stick aiming. Which Steam Input can simulate with a stick anyway.
Look, I'm not saying you can't prefer to play that way. You're in a very slim minority but you can absolutely be that guy.
I am saying that your choice is not anywhere near the only choice or the best choice. And for the places where playing with a mouse cursor is a must there is simply no good choice on a controller, with or without touchpads.
You didn't mention any games. What games are those.
Do I point the mouse without clicking in Monster Train or Slay the Spire? Yes. But also, those games have touch and controller support, so I can do the same in other ways. What game would I play on a handheld that requires that but doesn't have any other way to do the same? That's not rhetorical, I'm drawing a blank here.
Where do you need to jump or press buttons on a controller while controlling the mouse? What is that? What game has controller support but also requires a pointer? I mean, Abuse, but that was in 1996, so maybe not that? Most games that use mouse aiming when playing on a keyboard map that to the right stick, off the top of my head.
Surely there's a list of games you played this way with a Steam Controller or on Deck touchpads that wouldn't play well elsewhere. They must have names. Right?
Neither I, nor Valve, have ever pushed the touchpads as a stick replacement, and I will just keep reiterating my point that they are indispensable for use with non-controller games and without them,
Valve DID say they were a stick replacement. Maybe we can keep going until we catch up with ourselves.
I'm confused about why playing on your desk is "not fun", but I assume that was a joke? Besides that I've also mentioned multiple ways to use a mouse and keyboard on a TV, which I do routinely and it's just fine with next to no compromises. Plus the touchscreen on a Deck, motion controls and other stuff.
For the record, the touchscreen doesn't need a third hand at all. Plenty of games are perfectly playable touch-only and for anything with partial touch support it's barely an inconvenience to tap something on the screen and go back to the controllers. Maybe at this point you should tell me what mystery game absolutely requires a dual touchpad setup but doesn't require the responsiveness of precision of a mouse, thus making it indispensible to have your handheld device be the width of a tabloid or your controller have no right stick.
Because, honestly, I'm drawing a blank here. The proportion of games that don't support controllers, can't be navigated with a single touchpad and a touchscreen but would not require a full mouse setup is very small, in my book. And, frankly, for whatever those are the real answer is to... you know, play something else? Not every game needs to be played on every device. I wouldn't play some games on a Deck not because they lack controller features but simply because they're not the best fit for the device and I have thousands of other games I could play instead that feel at home on a handheld.