Players drive a car with three-way control on Steam

Today, 15 percent of all Steam gamers use a controller, a three-fold increase from just 5 percent in 2018. In console gaming sessions, 42 percent play using an Xbox controller, followed by 26 percent using Playstation controllers and 10 percent using a Steam Deck.

Valve shares numbers regarding new to update Coming to Steam Input – the system that gives consoles support for Steam games. So far, there are more than 300 consoles that have Steam Input support, a number that Valve believes will grow in the future.

According to Fredrik Eriksson, editor at FZ, the growing popularity of consoles is due, among other things, to the fact that it is now easier than before for consoles to get Steam support and that consoles are becoming more popular among a new crowd of gamers.

“I think a lot of younger or newer gamers are a little bit frustrated with the mouse and keyboard, and handheld controllers are becoming more interesting. So it probably depends a lot on the big genres. The traditional PC strategy genre is not that big anymore. Those kinds of trends are also playing a role. A lot of the big genres work really well with handheld controls, so it’s easy to go that way,” he says.

Among the changes coming to Steam Input is the Big Picture update, which lets you send the games you're playing on the Steam Deck to a larger screen. Xbox Elite controllers will get new drivers for the back buttons and Playstation controllers from third-party manufacturers will automatically get Steam Input support going forward.

Do you use a controller when playing on Steam?