Hori has announced the US release date for its officially licensed Steam controller. The console was originally released in Japan in October, but is now open for pre-orders in the US.
The Hori Wireless Horipad for Steam looks similar to an Xbox controller with more central buttons. The button in the middle is specifically for Steam and has the appropriate logo. There are buttons located next to the center to easily navigate through Steam’s menus. I’ve used Steam on an Xbox console, and it can be quite difficult when trying to use the Steam menu, so this seems like a huge improvement.
There are touch sensors on the joysticks, which operate the gyroscope function and can be assigned to other functions. There are also assignable back and bottom buttons, which are great for hotkeys. You can map everything from… Hori Device Manager.
Although it was designed specifically for Steam, with some resemblance to the now-discontinued Steam Controller, the controller does have some features that would be considered standard in gaming consoles. This includes the rumble packs, which were pretty much standard in the PS2 era, and the headphone jack, which was standard in the PS4 era. There’s no trackpad either, but the touch control on the joystick may make up for that. This isn’t a major setback, but not having a rattling panel now is abnormal.
Hori claims that the controller can provide up to 12 hours of playtime on a single charge, which is about the average time for the Dualsense controller and Xbox Series There’s a USB Type-A cable included in the box, but the cable isn’t glued to the controller, so you can swap it out for a USB-C cable if necessary.
The Hori Wireless Horipad is now available for pre-order on Amazon for $60, and will be available starting December 16.
(Tags for translation)Video Games