Yeah, I work at a plant where this is an ongoing concern. If we overstock product, we have to rent trailers to store the excess. The price works out to about $12 per pallet per month. It’s not much, but it’s also not nothing, and if we were in a more urban area, I could see that price quickly getting higher.
I went through a ton of the reviews, and as far as I know, none of them gave a box weight or even dimensions. Still, I based my palletizing math on the original Steam Controller box, 8.5" x 6.5" x 3", and I don’t think the new one is too far off of that. We’ll know for sure in “3 to 5 business days” at least.
It doesn’t mean a lot for your overall point, but I think you’re underestimating the weight of the packaging and USB-C cable it comes with a little. I grabbed a cable and a similar sized box and weighed them at 110g. It was a lot flimsier looking box than the controller’s too, so I could see that still being at good bit heavier. With that in mind, I think something closer to this math is more likely:
To be even more pessimistic, I think this works too especially if pallet weight is an appreciable amount of the total:
Edit: tweaked math a little for better palletizing
Unlike some comments here, I don’t think this is a “test run.” Valve just doesn’t like to sit on inventory. Where most companies let some stock build up before opening the flood gates, Valve just puts a product up for sale when the first shipping container comes out of the factory. Many customers end up feeling left out if they can’t make the first wave, but technically the majority of customers get the product earlier than they otherwise would have, so I’m sure Valve sees it as a win-win.
We’ll probably see a steady supply of similar batches for a while. The Deck preorders shipped much the same way.
The OG controller and Steam Deck are both sort of this way for me. Despite rarely using them, I never intend to sell them. My desktop just spoils me too much.
I expect having the new controller will actually encourage me to use the Deck more often though. Right now, starting a new game on the Deck feels like committing to the lesser experience due to not wanting to jump between control schemes. Having control parity fixes that.
I’m worried Valve has the same expectation for the Frame and will understock it. It’s the device I’m looking forward to the most.
I got mine in via Firefox on Android, but it definitely took some persistence.
Congrats!
I’m wondering if the “ships in 3 to 5 business days” is valid for everyone who got an order in.
Keep spamming Continue. It’ll eventually switch to “Working.” I must have hit it at least a hundred times from 9:59 PST to 10:10 before it worked for me. I wished they had opened purchasing right on the dot instead of a few minutes early, but oh well. I’m happy.
Edit: Out of Stock. Sorry everyone who didn’t get one. :(
A few notes:
First-party support for Steam Input’s deep configuration is a big selling point for a lot of people, myself included. It also means the lack of some of the extra buttons you mentioned present on other premium controllers doesn’t hurt so much, because there’s already so many options for layering in more inputs. Not wanting to mess with most of that doesn’t mean the controller is “not for you,” but it does mean it’s going to align less with what you value.
I absolutely love the Deck’s touchpads. I consider them non-negotiable inclusions for any future PC handheld or controller I buy. I will agree though that they aren’t ideal if your main use case for them was typing any more than a couple words at a time.
Citation needed on no one using grip-enabled gyro. It’s not something you need a game to support to make use of. Also, touch-enabled gyro was awesome on the original Steam Controller, and grip sensing on the Index controllers enabled some cool functionality.
I don’t think lack of console support or color customization are going to register as negatives for most people in the market for this. I can’t even remember the last time I used a console.
Valve has a pretty good track record with ergonomics, so I doubt accidentally activating the touchpads will be a common problem. Even if you find yourself in that spot though, you can have Steam Input disable a pad under certain conditions like when its thumb is on a stick.
Symmetrical sticks being a downside is extremely subjective.
In case you haven’t already, preload your Steam Wallet and make sure to account for any tax. As someone who got my Steam Deck order in the first 15 minutes it dropped, payment processing was the biggest barrier then. They might have fixed it since, but they also might not have. Good luck!
Yeah, I definitely think how much you value this controller is directly proportional to how much of the full Steam Deck control scheme you use. As a heavy user of the Deck’s touchpads to the point I’ll never consider another handheld without them, this is still a day one purchase for me even at $99, but I’m not going to recommend it to anyone without huge caveats.
I don’t think the positioning will feel too different from the Deck honestly. Your hands are going to be closer together holding the controller and thus rotated more inward. It looks like Valve rotated the grips and stick/button/trackpad triangles to match this angle, hence the lower sticks and tilted trackpads. The ergonomics on the Deck, original Steam Controller, Index controllers, and Index headset have all been great, so I trust them here.
Thanks for the reminder. I don’t think I encountered payment issues with the Deck (I used a credit card and was early enough to be in one of the April 2022 waves), but better safe than sorry.
Yeah, this is my main concern for the Frame release. I don’t want a “blocked for suspected fraud” credit card payment being the reason I miss the first few minutes of the reservation window, but I also don’t want hundreds of dollars just sitting in my Steam Wallet in case I miss the window anyway. First world problems.