Valve included this sketch image of the controller with the announcement. Go ahead, take it apart for clues about new hats coming Team Fortress 2!
Valve software
On Tuesday night, Valve Software used a forum on the Steam Games Store app to announce a delay, but for once it wasn’t for an internally developed video game. Instead, the company put a “when it’s ready” sticker on its living room Steam Machine PC project, which has now been moved to “a release window of 2015, not 2014.”
Valve staffer Eric Hope posted the bad news on the announcement page of the Steam Universe group, and it was the company’s first official Steam Machine update since a mid-March news release announced the addition of buttons and a d-pad to the peculiar controller of the PC project. Tuesday’s brief update focused primarily on that controller, describing a series of “live play tests” of its current, wireless incarnation. Those tests generated a lot of constructive feedback, Hope said, but “it also keeps us pretty busy to make all those improvements.”
The image attached to the post shows a messy sketch of the Steam Machine’s controller with no major design changes. At this point, we can only speculate that the feedback Hope mentioned has to do with the circular touchpads. During our playtests with Steam Machine controllers at this year’s Game Developers Conference, those elements proved particularly difficult to maneuver.
Valve is just one of 14 companies set to produce Steam Machines, and today’s announcement doesn’t specify whether the other producers will wait in kind to pair the hardware with the intended controller, or if they’ll continue with standard keyboards and mice. This is Valve’s first announcement of project delays in years, as the company has otherwise avoided attaching distant release windows to its projects (presumably to avoid hurting fans once again due to extended delays in the Half-life series).