Steam Controller - finally RTS games for the living room?

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/

It looks very nice. It will be probably inferior to the true mouse-and-keyboard experience, but it can obviously provide massive leaps over a thumbstick when it comes to pointing-devices for an RTS.

I'm imagining a full all-commands gesture menu on the left thumbstick.

My only complaint: no scrollwheel. I was hoping for a scrollwheel on the right shoulder, making the right-hand into a full mouse-like input.

Looks cool, im just woriing about analogs ergonomic.

I bought X360 controller last week, which is great, nothing is more relaxing than play Witcher 2 or burnout paradise from couch.

It's Valve. FPS games are their bread-and-butter. Real ones, not aim-assisted console ports. If the trackpads were just fancy joysticks, I think they'd have just stuck a pair of thumbsticks on the thing. I figure they went into this with the default assumption that the trackpads were pointing-devices and then went crazy with the weird haptic-feedback system to try and make them "feel right" as thumbsticks for games that need that. And since the haptic-feedback system is driven by code and not springs, it can be turned off for pointing-device usage.

I mean, you could probably even simulate trackball-like physics where you "throw" the pointer and then touch the pad to "brake" the pointer (like you would with a well-bearinged trackball) and trackballs ain't half bad for gaming. Not a mouse, but not bad.

We have some panasonic tv which has similar trackpad controller for internet browsing and controlling tv apps, it sucks. At least for me this conroller looks like piece of shit.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/20/panasonic_to_add_touchpad_remotes_to_top_end_tvs/

No doubt Valve is going to do an amazing job with this thing. They're smart and creative and they understand games.

But nobody, and I mean NOBODY can predict if it's going to be any damn good whatsoever for RTS games until we actually get our hands on one.

But it's fun to speculate.