Surprise, shock, the Xbox 360 controller continues to be the preferred button masher on Steam, in line with new figures launched by Valve yesterday, however the Nintendo Switch Pro controller can be proving to be a “pretty popular” alternative as properly, the numbers present. It’s nonetheless bought some option to go earlier than it matches the 27.2 million Xbox 360 controllers which might be presently registered on Steam, which make up 45% of the full controller possession, however ever since Valve launched an replace in May earlier this yr that enabled the complete function set of Nintendo’s new pad, it’s rapidly risen to grow to be the seventh hottest controller on Steam.
At the second, there are 458,725 Switch Pro controllers registered on Steam, and judging by Valve’s chart beneath, that quantity is ready to hold on rising over the approaching months. I need to additionally give a particular shout out to the 129,783 individuals who presently have a GameCube controller registered on Steam, in addition to the 195,914 individuals utilizing a SNES controller, you mad geniuses.
The Switch Pro controller has grow to be the seventh hottest controller kind on Steam since Valve launched full help for it in May 2018
Overall, Valve counted not less than 30 million gamers with not less than one controller registered to their account, over 15 million of which had registered multiple. Between accounts with a number of controllers registered, in addition to controllers which were registered to a number of accounts, there’s a complete of 60 million device-account pairs on Steam.
Elsewhere in Valve’s number-ladden pie charts, the PS4’s Dualshock four controller is “surprisingly abundant”, making up 20% of whole registrations. That’s simply forward of Microsoft’s Xbox One controller, which has a 19% share of registrations. You may most likely put that all the way down to there merely being extra PS4s on the market than Xbox Ones in the intervening time, however even Valve are shocked the proportion is so excessive. Historically, built-in help for the DS4 has been fairly poor, both with no-built help in any respect, or requiring using devoted software program to permit games to translate PS4 inputs into Xbox ones.
Xbox controllers as an entire, nevertheless, are nonetheless the largest group within the combine with a large 64% of whole controller registrations. Why are Xbox controllers so fashionable, I hear you ask? It’s most likely a mix of two issues. Firstly, controller compatibility was managed by particular person builders within the not so distant previous, which means they’d so as to add help for every controller kind they needed manually. Likewise, the final ten years have seen Microsoft put in a truck ton of effort in getting builders to undertake their underlying controller protocol, XInput, in line with Valve, making XInput now probably the most widespread little bit of tech in relation to built-in controller help.
Hopefully, although, the times of handbook controller compatibility help will quickly be over due to Valve’s Steam Input instruments, which have been in improvement since 2015 and now help over 200 controller fashions. By permitting customers to remap and share enter schemes throughout a large number of various units, help for brand spanking new controllers can now added routinely as a part of future Steam consumer updates, requiring zero work from the developer and making a extra uniform expertise it doesn’t matter what kind of controller you find yourself utilizing. Are the times of the Xbox controller numbered? Only time will inform.
