The trackpads on the deck are nice, it’s a great substitute for a mouse when you don’t have a mouse. But that’s all they are. Not a single game* has done anything to show off any greater potential. Binding ten keyboard keys into a dodgy ring menu is not a pleasant interface. I have never once wanted to use a trackpad as a redundant joystick input. I would like to freely pan around with one pad and point with the other - imagine that in a puzzle box game. Nothing can do this, the closest to an independent view control i’ve found is “bind mouse wheel up/down buttons to vertical swipes”.

Heck, I would like a water filled toy game where you just press the pads to squirt rings upwards, and it feels just a little bit haptically squooshy. Nobody has done even that much to make a game feel truly at home on the Deck with the deck’s controls.

The new controller looks nice, but I don’t see any reason for it to replace the lowest-common-denominator xbox style controller. Especially when there are some really good xbox clones with magnetic sticks being sold for super cheap.

*okay, there’s Aperture Desk Job. That hardly adds up to a game, it’s basically the manual that comes with the Deck controller. I’ve spent more time playing the PC Jr’s bios tutorial.