Gaming

I‘ve have a PS3 and PS4 and can‘t think of a single game that uses this feature. When I say widespread I don’t mean the hardware, but how it is implemented in software.

I decided to buy a good and expensive controller for my PC for the first time,

It‘s not exactly a widespread feature

Gyro has been present in Sony controllers since Dualshock 3.

Not many PC games natively support gyro, however, because most controllers that people have on the PC don't support it.

Yeah, it's an input that you can use to rig something up with Steam Input or some sort of macro software, but if you don't have a large proportion of the userbase with hardware support, game developers aren't going to put resources into native support, and without native support, most people won't use it, and if most people aren't going to use it, not a lot of incentive for game controller developers to support it.

Same thing for the haptic feedback and the force feedback triggers on the Playstation controllers. You can use them on the PC, theoretically, but just not much native support out there for them.

I kind of wish that there were some kind of standard, cross-platform, open-source software package that you could have games hook into on one end and controllers on the other, have a developer-provided profile, but let the package provide some kind of profile that does something reasonable for an arbitrary controller (or multiple controllers, think HOTAS) if the developer doesn't, and let game controller developers and players publish control scheme settings for games/controllers. Steam Input is kind of the closest thing to this, but is proprietary and tied to one distribution platform (Steam), which sort of sucks.

The sex toy crowd has something like this going on with buttplug.io -- which, ironically enough, can actually support linking games to game controllers with vibration, not just sex toys, but for some reason we haven't managed to get there with normal, actual game controller input. I kind of wish that given that they have their shit together enough to actually get something like this out there, that they'd rename the project to something uncontroversial like GameIO, support hooking up games to arbitrary output devices and input devices, and then expose an input layer to games. Have the option to use the game's provided profile by default, but also use a custom one.

Steam deck has it.

The Steam Deck is successful for what it is, and maybe one day it will have enough market share to be able to really drive game features, but as things stand, it's something like a percent.

googles

https://pocketmags.com/us/maximum-pc-magazine/february-2024/articles/1399340/steam-deck-oled

If you crunch the numbers and assume the Deck does indeed represent 40% of Linux users, which make up 1.97% of Steam users, then the Deck is used by 0.78% of all Steam users.

That's maybe the largest single bloc of people using a single specific non-mouse/keyboard input device on Steam, but it's still a very small portion of the overall PC user base.

Yep games for Xbox don't have it because Xbox controllers don't have it.

Problem is that even on a premium product, cost is gonna be a factor. Well, and weight.

I can think of a bunch of features that could be supported in a controller. Problem is, not everyone is gonna want everything, and if they put it on the thing, everyone is gonna pay for it. On the XBox Elite Series 2:

• Interchangeable thumbstick hats: Yes

• Interchangeable D-pad hats: Yes

• Interchangeable thumbsticks (a la the Thrustmaster eSwap): No

• Rumble motors: Yes

• Haptic force feedback (a la the Playstation's DualSense): No

• Gyros (a la the Playstation's DualSense): No

• Force-feedback triggers (a la the Playstation's DualSense): No

• Hall Effect triggers: Yes

• Hall Effect thumbsticks: No

• Extra back buttons: Yes, 4

• Extra face buttons (a la SCUF Envision): No

• Force feedback thumbsticks: No (I'm not aware of anyone that makes these, but force feedback joysticks were once a real thing, useful with flight sims simulating pre-fly-by-wire aircraft, like the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2)

• Pressure-sensitive buttons (a la the Playstation's DualSense): No

• Bluetooth LE: Yes

• Wired: Yes

• RGB LED: Yes (though apparently the XBox hasn't historically provided access to this and Steam Input does; I don't know if this has changed).

That one does appear to be compatible with the Elite 2, but I don't think either model supports motion control on PC, just PS4/5 and Nintendo Switch.