Valve to Officially Support DualShock 4
Now here is a rather interesting development, as it seems that Valve has decided to officially support the DualShock 4 controller, calling it “a really nice, high quality controller“. Valve aims to implement an API on Steam which will make it easier for developers to utilise it for their games.
“Now, why start with the PS4 controller? Well, not only is it a really nice, high quality controller, but it’s also got a gyro and a touchpad, so it’s got a lot of overlapping functionality with the Steam Controller. Also, existing native support for the PS4 controller on the PC is a bit weak; in this case Steam itself is communicating directly with the device so everything that’s nice and reliable.” – Lars Doucet
Furthermore, according to Valve, due to having an in-built gyro-system and touchpad, the controller is in function rather similar to Valve’s proprietary controller which also features similar designs. Not only that, but some of the more interesting problems noted by Valve was that players are rarely able to rebind keys, will see different glyphs as compared to their controller (Xbox button prompts while using a PS4 controller), and are still a victim of latency.
“First and foremost is you now don’t have to write your own key rebinding interface if you don’t want to – as long as you support the Steam API, the user just pulls open the overlay, changes their inputs, goes back to the game, everything just works. And if you’re using something like Joy2Key, this rescues you from that nightmare. It also removes the need for a key config launcher.“ – Lars Doucet
Valve aims to introduce solutions to the aforementioned problems, and make it so that both creators and users can utilise their controllers to full extent. They are especially going to make the key rebinding an essential feature as after receiving over 1.2 million game configurations since launch, it was clear the consumers prefer following a control scheme best suited for them.
Valve has not yet confirmed as to when the API will be available for everyone, but it should be relatively soon. Be sure to check out the entire transcript from Steam Dev Days event which was held on the 12th of October, 2016.