Valve first announced their Steam Controller in September of 2013, with two touchpads, a centered touchscreen and a few extra buttons around the strange design. It's now early 2015, and the controller still hasn't been released, despite undergoing several publicly reported redesigns.
New information as reported by GameSpot reveals that the Steam Controller may finally be ready for release. It seems that the final revision of the controller, leaked in December and seen above, may be good enough to use with a range of living room PCs and PC games, and won't need any further tweaking.
The info comes straight from the mouth of Origin PC CEO Kevin Wasielewski at CES 2015, who claimed that Valve will have more to reveal at GDC 2015 in March. He also said that the term "Steam Machine" is basically meaningless these days, with "living room PC" most accurately reflecting what these systems are designed for.
The latest iteration of the Steam Controller appears to include some sort of directional pad (potentially touch-bassed) alongside an analog stick, selection of faceplate buttons and a touchpad. There's also the standard trigger buttons, making this controller a hybrid of the original Steam Controller design and more traditional game console controllers.
So far, Valve hasn't officially announced any release date, pricing or final design for the Steam Controller. The Steam Machines program also remains in limbo, while their Linux-based SteamOS is still in beta.