Valve's £85 Steam Controller divides gamers ahead of May launch

Valve has announced its new Steam Controller will be available to order from 4 May, and will cost £85 in the UK and $99 in the US - prices that have raised eyebrows among some gamers.

The second generation of the gamepad, it will be compatible with PCs and Valve's handheld console, the Steam Deck.

It is also designed to work with the company's own upcoming gaming PC, the Steam Machine.

"The Steam Controller may be more expensive than the standard controllers from Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation, but we do live in a time where companies including Sony and Microsoft are selling premium controllers for £150-£200", said Chris Scullion deputy editor of Video Games Chronicle.

There has been a negative reaction from some gamers on social media though.

The price changed it from "insta-buy to thinking about it", according to a comment on Reddit reacting to an early review.

However, another on Bluesky felt the cost made "sense" given the "more premium" tech involved.

"The early hands-on verdicts on the Steam Controller appear to be positive, so while I don't see it taking over the Xbox Wireless Controller as the most commonly used PC controller, I can still certainly see it selling reasonably well among the smaller group of core enthusiasts willing to pay more for such a peripheral," Scullion told BBC News.

Reviews have been largely positive about the wireless controller's use of haptic trackpads, which let players simulate mouse controls in PC games, and of a magnetic 'puck' to sync the pad to PC, as well as charge it.

However, reviewers also pointed out the lack of "swappable parts" and customisation in the controller.

The pad is designed to only work with devices running Valve's PC gaming platform Steam and is not compatible with consoles.

Much of the discussion online has focused on the price, twice what the first generation of the device cost in 2015.

It sits between current standard tiers for controllers for consoles such as PlayStation and Xbox (roughly between £45-£65, $60-$75) and their premium versions (roughly between £120 - £160, $150-$200).

"I have paid more for a controller, I have paid a lot less, too," read one of the most upvoted comments.

"This device wasn't made to be your plug and play controller, it's meant to be specifically a controller for your PC," said one justification of the cost.

The price has led some to speculate about the potential cost of the Steam Machine, Valve's second attempt at a gaming PC designed to bring PC games to the TV, which does not yet have a specific release date.

Valve's first shot at the hardware was released in 2015, but it failed to break into a market dominated by Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo.

Prices then started at $499 (£300) but, as business professor Joost van Dreunen remarked in February, "the combination of global tariffs and AI companies' voracious appetite for compute" meant this iteration is expected to cost a lot more.

The rising cost of computer components such as Ram - driven in part by demand from AI data centres - has also been linked to higher hardware prices across the industry.

In February Valve announced it was revising both the price and release date of the Steam Machine, alongside its wireless VR headset the Steam Frame, while still aiming for a launch in the first half of 2026.

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