Forget the Steam Machine - a new Steam controller is the most exciting hardware announcement I've heard this year

Yes Valve's new Steam Machine looks neat, and yes I'll almost certainly end up mulling over a purchase as my already creaking GPU continues ageing itself into irrelevancy, but - sorry Steam Frame, sorry Switch 2 - it's certainly not the gaming hardware I'm most excited about this year. Instead - and I realise countless eyebrows are about to shoot up in unison as I say what I'm going to say - the megaton news for me is that a new Steam controller is on the way.

It might be divisive, but I'm on the side that bloody loves the original Steam controller. Sure, its ergonomics are a bit rubbish and its single analogue stick makes it immediately impractical for a lot of games; and yes, it feels a bit cheap and plasticky in a way that never really screamed premium in the same way as the official Xbox controller or PlayStation's DualSense. But! As a determinedly TV-focused PC player, when that little plastic lump arrived in 2015, it opened up a world of gaming that just wouldn't have been possible for me otherwise.

For all my dalliances with consoles over the years, I've always been a PC gamer at heart. I was fortunate enough to have access to a family PC at the right age, meaning my formative games were as much Thief, Theme Park, Sim City, and Myst as they were Mario and Donkey Kong. So while I love the bombastic cinematics you'd perhaps more readily associate with consoles (and have slowly amassed a decent enough home cinema set-up to properly appreciate them) I was never going to say goodbye to the idiosyncratic PC scene if I could help it. And the Steam Controller came along at exactly the right time, as I was trying - for admittedly fairly niche logistical reasons - to get the classic console couch experience without a console and without forfeiting all the cool stuff on PC.

These days, pretty much everything on consoles comes to PC and a surprising number of traditionally PC-focused genres come to consoles too, meaning classic controller support is more common both ways. But Valve's funny little controller has remained a constant couch companion all the same, ensuring nothing - not an elaborate space sim, nor a fiddly 4X - has escaped my grasp. You've got its innovative dual touchpads, bringing something like a mouse experience to your thumbs, while Steam's fantastically customisable controller mapping software - working in conjunction with the Steam Controller's mass of face, shoulder, and rear buttons - means you've got the tools to create some incredibly elaborate setups even without a keyboard and mouse. And all usable from a comfortably reclining position on the sofa.

So you can probably imagine my horror when Valve announced it was discontinuing the Steam Controller in 2019, sending my mind racing to a future when - one mishap or malfunction later - my days of horizontal PC gaming might suddenly become a lot more complicated. But lo, following rumours of a revival last year, the Steam Controller has now officially been reborne in a fancier, flashier form. Better still, it looks to remedy most, if not all, of its predecessors flaws. It's got a second analog thumbstick, for starters, and a sleeker, more ergonomic design borrowing heavily from the Steam Deck - a handheld that manages to be incredibly comfy, despite its size, and premium in a way Valve's first controller never quite was. It also promises other updates and improvements too, including better gyro-based motion controls, better haptics, and more - which you can read about in Will Judd's thorough breakdown.

Sure, its true quality remains entirely hypothetical until Steam Controller: The Sequel is finalised and in everyone's hands, but I'm genuinely excited to see one of my most treasured gaming accessories return, now with some 2025-style knobs on. The real question, of course, is whether it'll be robust enough, and comfortable enough, to replace not only my original Steam controller but my stand-by Xbox one too. But regardless, at least I'll no longer wake up in a sweat at night, haunted by nightmares of the day my trusty Steam Controller finally dies.