8BitDo announces it's controllers now have Steam/SteamOS compatibility
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These controllers were all working on SteamOS before as far as I know, so I'm interested to see what this changes. My understanding is that previously their controllers just show up as generic xbox controllers, and now they will be properly recognized. We'll see if this has any other benefits like custom bindings for back buttons and things like that.
Edit:
According to @[email protected]
got the 8bitdo Ultimate 2 wireless controller with the latest firmware update, and can confirm dinput mode lets me map the back buttons and extra bumpers to different inputs through Steam Input. Analog triggers and gyro work too.
Do y'all use a controller in heldheld mode or only docked? I'm curious what the use case is here.
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These controllers were all working on SteamOS before as far as I know, so I'm interested to see what this changes. My understanding is that previously their controllers just show up as generic xbox controllers, and now they will be properly recognized. We'll see if this has any other benefits like custom bindings for back buttons and things like that.
Edit:
According to @[email protected]
got the 8bitdo Ultimate 2 wireless controller with the latest firmware update, and can confirm dinput mode lets me map the back buttons and extra bumpers to different inputs through Steam Input. Analog triggers and gyro work too.
That's cool to see but I've gone through about 3 8bitdo controllers (gave the last one to my partner). I like them but I wish there triggers were not the rubber magnetic pads. I'm a bit heavy handed when using the triggers and it eventually crushes the pads to not work. Other than that great controller.
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Do y'all use a controller in heldheld mode or only docked? I'm curious what the use case is here.
Ultimate 2 wireless I use with 2.4Ghz through the docking station. It works well but it was annoying that the back paddles and L4/R4 buttons (secondary bumpers) could only be mapped as another button, instead of being their own function. It will be nice to have the extra buttons if that is what’s working now. I had the beta firmware on them but steam still did not recognize them yet (but the beta firmware did allow Switch 2 to recognize them!)
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Ultimate 2. It’s got a gyroscope and back paddles.
I love the trigger locks for Switch 2 use as well. It’s nice to have a controller I can go between both systems with.
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Do y'all use a controller in heldheld mode or only docked? I'm curious what the use case is here.
I only use controllers when docked personally
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I only use controllers when docked personally
Nice, thanks. How has your docked experience been? I've only been able to get it working well with low-power games like Monster Train. Any 3d game seems to run horribly, even older titles.
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I just got their ultimate 2 wireless today. It's really nice and works very well on Linux. I just wish their app worked at least through wine. I couldn't even make it work in a Windows VM. Hope they bring it over.
Having the same issue and I don't know how to update to the latest firmware without the app.
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Ultimate 2. It’s got a gyroscope and back paddles.
Is there a symmetrical version, like a PS controller, or just the Xbox-like layout?
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Nice, thanks. How has your docked experience been? I've only been able to get it working well with low-power games like Monster Train. Any 3d game seems to run horribly, even older titles.
Recent updates have caused some crashes actually when docking to my TV, but I'm on beta OS updates and have a lot of deck plugins, so it might not be affecting other people.
Other than that docked play is pretty good in my experience. There's a major performance hit if you have upscaling set to use fsr though, especially on 4k monitors.
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These controllers were all working on SteamOS before as far as I know, so I'm interested to see what this changes. My understanding is that previously their controllers just show up as generic xbox controllers, and now they will be properly recognized. We'll see if this has any other benefits like custom bindings for back buttons and things like that.
Edit:
According to @[email protected]
got the 8bitdo Ultimate 2 wireless controller with the latest firmware update, and can confirm dinput mode lets me map the back buttons and extra bumpers to different inputs through Steam Input. Analog triggers and gyro work too.
I really wish you could swap the buttons easily to match the system. The 8-bitdo controllers tend to have the Nintendo layout which kind of sucks because most games don't support that they use Xbox. And then of course if you get into emulation nothing will match the PlayStation so I either need several controllers around or to memorize locations
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Recent updates have caused some crashes actually when docking to my TV, but I'm on beta OS updates and have a lot of deck plugins, so it might not be affecting other people.
Other than that docked play is pretty good in my experience. There's a major performance hit if you have upscaling set to use fsr though, especially on 4k monitors.
Interesting, I'll have to play around with it. I've been docking it to my 4k TV so maybe I need to force a lower res.
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Interesting, I'll have to play around with it. I've been docking it to my 4k TV so maybe I need to force a lower res.
That's usually ok if you're not using fsr, but for the deck I personally recommend capping the external display resolution at 1080p.
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That's cool to see but I've gone through about 3 8bitdo controllers (gave the last one to my partner). I like them but I wish there triggers were not the rubber magnetic pads. I'm a bit heavy handed when using the triggers and it eventually crushes the pads to not work. Other than that great controller.
Upside, usually the controllers are extremely easy to fix. I'm not sure if they give free replacement pads still, but they used to if you asked support.
I've had other problems than shoulders on my pros, and never with the ultimate one I got, those seem to have a pretty solid build.
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I really wish you could swap the buttons easily to match the system. The 8-bitdo controllers tend to have the Nintendo layout which kind of sucks because most games don't support that they use Xbox. And then of course if you get into emulation nothing will match the PlayStation so I either need several controllers around or to memorize locations
You can! They have replacement buttons for whichever layout you want for fairly cheap. I'm using the original ultimate Bluetooth with an Xbox layout.
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You can! They have replacement buttons for whichever layout you want for fairly cheap. I'm using the original ultimate Bluetooth with an Xbox layout.
Wait what? Do you have a link for this?
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I really wish you could swap the buttons easily to match the system. The 8-bitdo controllers tend to have the Nintendo layout which kind of sucks because most games don't support that they use Xbox. And then of course if you get into emulation nothing will match the PlayStation so I either need several controllers around or to memorize locations
I wish so many games didn't default to the Xbox layout with no option to change it. Having grown up with the SNES layout, the prompts fuck me up every time.
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Interesting, I'll have to play around with it. I've been docking it to my 4k TV so maybe I need to force a lower res.
No wonder performance has been bad! The Deck is not meant to be a 4k system.
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These controllers were all working on SteamOS before as far as I know, so I'm interested to see what this changes. My understanding is that previously their controllers just show up as generic xbox controllers, and now they will be properly recognized. We'll see if this has any other benefits like custom bindings for back buttons and things like that.
Edit:
According to @[email protected]
got the 8bitdo Ultimate 2 wireless controller with the latest firmware update, and can confirm dinput mode lets me map the back buttons and extra bumpers to different inputs through Steam Input. Analog triggers and gyro work too.
Has anyone gotten this to work? I have both the SN30 Pro and the Pro 2, both display the latest firmware update as 2.06 which just lists Switch 2 compatibility. Steam doesnt seem to recognize the back buttons on the Pro 2 either.
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I wish so many games didn't default to the Xbox layout with no option to change it. Having grown up with the SNES layout, the prompts fuck me up every time.
How can it be so hard for devs to just include some additional sets of glyphs and allow the player to switch manually? Then nobody would have this problem.
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These controllers were all working on SteamOS before as far as I know, so I'm interested to see what this changes. My understanding is that previously their controllers just show up as generic xbox controllers, and now they will be properly recognized. We'll see if this has any other benefits like custom bindings for back buttons and things like that.
Edit:
According to @[email protected]
got the 8bitdo Ultimate 2 wireless controller with the latest firmware update, and can confirm dinput mode lets me map the back buttons and extra bumpers to different inputs through Steam Input. Analog triggers and gyro work too.
So how do you update firmware with just a Steamdeck? 8bitdo does not seem to supply Linux software support anymore, so it feels a bit hilarious that they support SteamOS without any official way of updating controllers there.
I found the fwupd tool on github, but it seems a hacky way that cannot update everything. Can the 8bitdo tool be run via proton/wine?
