The Steam Controller 2 May Be Able To Detect How Far Away Your Hands Are From It

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Ever since I had my Steam Deck, I dreamed of having a controller that would essentially be the Steam Deck without the screen, and it looks like Valve is doing exactly that. There have been leaks about the upcoming controller, codenamed Ibex, and it looks exactly as I had imagined it. Now, there has been some new information on it, and I am very much digging the possible feature it could have.

Coming from Brad Lynch (@SadlyItsBradley) over on Twitter/X, who has been at the forefront of these leaks, he was told by his source that the controller will be able to detect how far away your hands are from the handles. This is using a capsense feature, and is similar to the Index controllers, but without the full finger tracking. If this is true, this is a really cool feature, and I would be curious to see how it could be utilized with Steam Input for most games.

While we do trust Brad as a source, we haven't heard it directly for ourselves, so take this information with a grain of salt. He also posted a photo of the controller, which is an AI recreation that was trained on what he claims is a real image of the new controller. It does fall in line with the leaks we have had so far, so I am curious to see what the real photo is like. We have reached out to verify the claim as well, but have yet to hear back from Brad.

There is no projected release date or window for the controller yet, and it hasn't even been formally announced, but with all the leaks directly from Steam, it's hard not to believe it is real and coming.

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