What? The Steam Controller 2 has already been mass produced? Grab some popcorn, because Valve's first controller brought out strong opinions.

The Steam Controller's history was rocky. It has been out of production for over a decade. It was controversial, not rocky, but it had a lot of diehard fans and fangirls, as well as a few detractors including our own hardware overlord Dave James. Someone cover Dave's ears, there's already talk of a new iteration in mass production.

Brad Lynch, a Valve leaker and boffin, revealed on X that the Steam Controller 2, codenamed Ibex, is "being tooled in their factories for a mass-production goal right now" and that "that's how I know they're at later stages of production."

Brad is probably referring to Valve's factories when he says "their factories", since both products are Valve. This could shed some light on the Steam Controller 2's production, which has been a mystery along with everything else regarding the Steam Controller 2.

In 2022, Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang said "yes, we want to do it." It's a matter of when and how.

If this rumour is true, then it appears that "when" could be very soon.

The Steam Controller was available for quite a few years until it was discontinued in 2019. During its lifetime, it had a dedicated following of proponents who praised the controller's versatility: two trackpads and gyro movements, as well as back-paddles. These proponents claimed that the controller's custom configurations made it easier to play mouse and keyboard games than a standard controller.

The problem was that there weren't any official baseline profiles. You had to search through the community profiles to find one that worked. It wasn't always easy to adapt to. The build quality was also not great, though it's clear that Valve hardware has improved dramatically since then.

Plus, as Dave said in 2022, it wasn't necessary to use a Steam Controller if you could use a standard controller that was easier to use and better built, or a mouse with keyboard. Steam Controllers would have sold more if there had been a larger market for Steam couch gaming. However, the Steam Machines Valve released were too late and came with Windows instead of SteamOS. They didn't catch up.

I asked Dave to comment on the latest Steam Controller 2 rumour, and I received a picture of a whale and plant pot hurtling toward the ground: "Hello ground!" "Oh no! Not again!" Valve might not use the exact same design, but that's the sentiment if it does. Valve tends to release new things only when it is confident that it is doing something completely different.

Even if went with the same design as the original Steam Controller, I can see that there is more room today for a Steam Controller 2, than there was back then. It's because, even though the Shield and Steam Machine were abandoned, there is more room today for couch Steam gaming, thanks to screen mirroring, remote play, and other options.

I use remote play to control my laptop and beam the Lenovo Legion Go to the big screen.

I think that the ease of remote play, the availability of handhelds, and the docks make a Steam controller more useful today than when the first Steam Controller was released. Heck, I even use an external control for my handheld when am not streaming it to the large screen, such as sat up on the bed using the Legion Go built-in stand.

If it had a build quality similar to the Index controller or Steam Deck, then it could do well. Despite all of this, we still don't know for sure if Valve will use the same trackpad as the first-gen. Valve would be better off opting for a trackpad withthumbsticks, similar to the Steam Deck. It's also fitting: The Steam Controller experiment led to the Steam Deck and then the Steam Deck led to the Steam Controller 2

I personally hope, since we know so little about the Steam Controller, that it is just a solid, normal controller, without trackpads, etc. Not because I'm a fan of controversy, but simply because the thought makes me laugh. It's either that or a giant button like the 8BitDo super buttons. And announce it, of course, on April 1.

Jokes aside, trackpad is a badboi. It will be interesting to see how the detractors react to the design, especially in the gaming world of today where it makes sense to use a trackpad.