Ever since its release during late 2013, the DualShock 4 has been considered the best controller available for playing on the PC, and as it has turned out, Valve likes it quite a bit, too. As has been reported by Gamasutra, Jeff Bellinghausen from Valve and Lars Doucet from Level Up Labs have announced at Steam Dev Days that Valve will soon be releasing a Steam update “that adds full configurability to controllers other than the Steam controller,” beginning with the DualShock 4.
Using the PS4 controller through the Steam API is exactly the same as a Steam Controller, you make the exact same API calls, you only get actions, not inputs, and the Steam API takes care of everything.
Apart from the intriguing dovetailing functionality, it’s a genuinely nice controller, too. It’s also got a gyro and a touchpad, so it’s got a lot of overlapping functionality with the Steam Controller, Also, existing native support for the PS4 controller on the PC is a bit weak; in this case Steam itself is communicating directly with the device so everything [is] nice and reliable.
– As Jeff and Lars Explained
The talk turns very technical and slightly harder to comprehend as the duo dig down further, but the relevant bit of news for you is that you’ll soon be seeing a lot more of built-in support for the PS4 controllers, without the need for horsing around with third-party tools like DS4Windows.
This means that players can pair their PS4 controller directly to their PC and use all the configurability options available to the Steam Controller, including use of the PS4 touchpad and gyro
– They Added.
And there’s no need to fret if you’re an Xbox fan like myself: Dates and details haven’t really been officially announced, but “similar support for other controller models is coming.” And, before i’m accused of bias, Microsoft’s pricey Elite controller is really nice too.
