Hori's Japan-only Steam controller is intriguing, if not all that impressive

The Valve-branded Wireless HoriPad for Steam doesn't match up to the Deck

Valve released the Steam Controller in 2015 after iterating on the design in public for years. While the final product wasn’t quite as radical as the initial plans, which involved a touchscreen, two haptic trackpads, and no face buttons or analog sticks, it still took some time to get your thumbs around.

I know it had its (extremely vocal) fans, but personally I never got on with it. Even with face buttons and a left analog stick, the haptic trackpads never felt like great substitutes for a D-pad or a right stick to me. They did work better for certain mouse-driven games than a traditional controller, but real-time strategy on a sofa didn’t turn out to be a common enough use case; Valve discontinued the Steam Controller in 2019.

The Steam Deck retained certain elements of the Controller, however, most notably its trackpads. And now we have a new “Steam controller” of sorts: an officially branded joypad built by venerable Japanese peripheral maker Hori. It’s called the Wireless HoriPad for Steam, and for some reason it’s only available in Japan.

This is not a Steam Controller revival, exactly, but it does have some unique features.