I got a steam deck primarily as an easy way to play steam games on the TV. I also got a PS5 controller since I’ve read it is one of the better controllers for the steam deck. However one issue I’m encountering is that all the games I’ve tried shows the wrong key to press on the controller. For instance they would show the A button when I need to press the X button or the B button when I actually need to press the Y button.
Is there any way to fix this? I’m also new to using controllers for games and this issue is making it harder to adapt to using a controller :/
Yes. It really comes down to the creation of Xinput, I think. But yes, that would be Microsoft and Xbox making the decision.
XInput is an API for applications to easily communicate with controllers. It was designed to map to Xbox 360 controllers. So any game that ended up coming to PC usually used XInput since it was readily available through the DirectX SDK and required less setup from the developer.
So as a result, nearly every game at the time was designed with Xbox input only, using XInput. 3rd party brands would make controllers that also used XInput. Microsoft also made it really difficult for Sony controllers to work at the time, which is why tools like DS4Windows came about.
Things changed quite a bit with the 8th generation consoles though. Steam created the Steam Controller, and their Controller API to go along with it. This eventually opened up support for PS4/PS5 and Nintendo controllers, initially by mapping those controllers to Xbox or KB&M. But when Sony also started releasing games on PC, native dual shock and dual sense controller support started appearing in more games. While other, unsupported games started offering the ability to switch controller glyphs in the game settings and relying on Steam’s controller API as workarounds.
So over the years, the PC controller support has become very fragmented, but Steam has done a lot to work around the fragmentation.
What game were you playing?
I tested with both Balatro and Disco Elysium. IIRC Dave the diver was also wrong.
That’s interesting. I know Disco Elysium at least should support Sony glyphs.
It could also have to do with the controller order, possibly. There’s a rearrange controller order option in the controller settings menu.