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[Controller] Is the 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Worth It for Gyro Players? (Video, 10:20) by FlickStick Videos on Sep 2026 (comparison with Steam Controller) (inv.nadeko.net)
submitted 3 days ago* by to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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I had to add bunch of information to the post title, in order to make sure its about Steam Controller too. He goes through every feature and differences and shows pretty interesting facts too. This is not just about Gyro (but has a focus on this topic). I have both controllers, so this is an interesting comparison.

Video description (only relevant parts):

Which one is best for gyro? Steam Controller (2026) or the 8BitDo Ultimate 2? In this video, I share my results after comparing them head-to-head.

Chapters: 
Intro: 00:00
What do they have in common?: 02:15
Differences: 05:24
Conclusion: 09:28
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[–] [S] 1 point 2 days ago (4 children)

Hmm, I exclusively use the Ultimate 2 Wireless Controller in 2.4 dongle in its standard Xinput mode (I have it for games and emulators outside Steam). And I can edit the layout like I can on the Steam Controller. As I do not have Bluetooth available on my PC, cannot test it.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    oh maybe im mixing up the 3. some of them have extra buttons that can be mapped separately to anything including keyboard in steam with bluetooth but only standard xbox/ps controller button duplication in dongle mode

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 days ago (2 children)

    Well the 8bitdo controller has 3 modes you can use: Xinput (Xbox, the standard on PC), Dinput (Playstation) and Switch. Some features are only available in the other modes, because Xinput does not support gyro. So you can use gyro only in Dinput or Switch mode. Same for Switch, it does not support analog triggers. I think there are differences in Bluetooth vs 2.4 dongle, but I don't know what it is.

    So if you are like me and use the 8bitdo (or watched others reviews) in Xinput only, then you can't use gyro and this has nothing to do with Steam Input support; it's the controller firmware itself.

    The reason why I don't want to use the other modes is, because I have to enable them by holding button when turning on the controller. But the stupid 8bitdo firmware does not accept changing the mode when taking it up from the dock. So I would need to take it, turn controller off, then on with button... this is so inconvenient for daily use. Normally the state of last mode would be saved in the controller, but when taking it up from the dock its always Xinput as I understand.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I haven't even used gyro since gravity rush on ps4. I regularly forget it's a feature. The one I'm thinking of I gave to my brother but it had 4 extra buttons that I could map to macros and stuff but in the other mode it was only whatever the 8bitdo app allows, and last I tried that doesn't work in linux.

    Its really too bad you can't set it to work in any mode on any connection type because that would give it almost full feature parity to the steam controller and having pretty much full configuration ability without needing their app, while coming in the more familiar ergonomic shapes of the 8bitdo product lines.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 days ago

    That's a limitation on the APIs, not the controller using it. If Xinput doesn't support it, then it's not the fault of the controller. That's why the new Steam Controller isn't using any of the existing APIs, but has its own Steam API basically (not talking about the Steam Input software, but about the driver of the controller). That's why it does not work without Steam at the moment, but there are outside efforts. Dinput on the other hand has most features including gyro. Buuuut... not all games support Dinput, the glyphs are then different and there are driver based differences on how games use that.

    So the point is, 8bitdo is stuck here. But they could make it less unbearable at least. It just needed another switch like the 2.4<>Bluetooth switch. I personally ignored gyro for the most part, but recently got more serious into it since I started playing racing simulation on PC using gyro controls. It feels great, more fine grained control than analog sticks.

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