Playing games on Steam with an Xbox controller has always been a pretty user-friendly experience. But we can’t say the same for PlayStation DualShock and DualSense controllers. That changed today with a Steam update that now allows PlayStation’s DualShock and DualSense owners to find games that fully support the device.
The update also brought changes in terms of how easy it is to navigate the platform. For instance, there’s better sorting and filtering now, the compatibility information on store pages is clearer to users, and it’s overall more straightforward to find out whether games in one’s library will work well with the controller in their hands.
Even better, the Controller-hub on Steam has been enhanced to allow you to search by controller type. You will now see a filter you can use to pick any of the controllers you’ve played with recently or manually select a controller from the list.
The filtering gets even more specific. There’s another set of filters that lets you include specific controller models for Xbox, DualShock, and DualSense controllers and provides you with the settings to find games that are built with those controllers in mind.
The most exciting part of the update is probably the full controller support. Previously, with partial support, most of the controllers’ features, such as the touchpad and haptic feedback, were not supported.
Full Controller Support means that you’ll be able to perform almost all of the common actions and interactions that you would expect to be able to do with a controller. It should be able to get through the menus and into the game and play through the game entirely with a controller without having to switch to a mouse and keyboard.
Valve notes that in the past four years, the PlayStation controller saw a 4x increase in session, making up 27% of the controllers used on Steam.
Steam’s update adds a note that might be important to keep in mind: “Full Controller Support does not necessarily mean that the game makes use of every feature on the controllers.”
