Valve has introduced a rating of game controllers used in Steam

Holivary on the topic "what is better - a gaming console or PC sharpened for games" can probably be attributed to the eternal themes. Arguments in their favor, supporters of both points of view can lead very different, one is more beautiful than the other. But consolers rarely manage to pull PC fans into their camp, and the latter, respectively, do not always have the opportunity to convince consolers.

But both the first and second agree that the gamepad can and should be used both when playing on the console and on the PC. Of course, not everyone uses game controllers in conjunction with personal computers, but many gamers do just that. Recently, the company Valve presented detailed statistics on the use of gamepads by Steam users.

So, according to Steam , about 30 million users of the service have at least one gamepad connected to a PC. By the way, this company data was found out after the “Steam Input” program was launched, which made it possible to understand the preferences of gamers. These are depersonalized, but they allow us to understand which game controllers are more popular than others. By the way, many players connect to their computer not one, but two or more gamepads, so their total number approaches 60 million.
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Data on the use of game controllers collected by the company for three years. As it turned out, Microsoft devices became the most popular gamepads - in particular, the controller for the Xbox 360 (about 27.2 million registered Steam users use them), as well as the controller for the Xbox One (approximately 11.5 million users prefer these devices). As for the Sony DualShock, they were chosen by 12.2 million users, and SualShock 3 was chosen by 4.1 million people.



By the way, Valve has its own iron and, naturally, the company is actively promoting it. So, she managed to sell hundreds of thousands of their own controllers. About 1.3 million Steam Controllers are connected to PC players. Sales, by the way, started in June 2016, so the result is not bad. True, most Steam controllers are used irregularly, they are only used from time to time.

Steam Controllers are often used as secondary gamepads. What is interesting, most often the users of controllers from Microsoft - about 20% of those who have devices for Xbox One use Steam Controllers. Among users of DualShock 4 "alternatives" only 9%.

Switch Pro controller has unexpectedly turned out to be quite popular, given its novelty. It appeared in 2017, and the players began to use it almost immediately. Then, a year ago, support was limited by the basic ability to reassign buttons on the Steam input system. This led to the fact that some functions did not work, including motion control and vibration. But the update released by Steam in May 2018 has breathed life into this controller. All features and icons have been added. Now Switch Pro is in seventh place among the most popular controllers in the Steam ecosystem.



According to the "researchers", the share of controllers for consoles from Sony is lower than the same gamepads from Xbox, since the first ones are hardly perceived as devices for playing on a PC. Initially, we had to use specialized software to connect controllers from Sony to a personal computer (at the very beginning it was soldering and software, then - just software).



Other devices, including steering wheels, joysticks and other accessories, are included in the Valve game controllers rating. They, by the way, are also quite popular (for example, 783 danspads are registered in the system). Another interesting point is that fans of old game consoles connect, for example, controllers from N64 and other systems to PCs. Currently, the Steam input system supports more than 200 controller models.