Received the 2026 Steamcontroller today. First thing I did was connect it to my PC/Steam and updated the firmware of the puck and the controller itself.
Then tried it in a few different ways and I can tell that right now it does not work with Recalbox 10.0.5 at all. Tried the dongle directly in a usb3 port, as well as a through the official raspberry usb hub on the pi 400.
While the dongle shows up with lsusb command, and the controller connects to the dongle, it is just impossible to get any input going on.
Connected it directly with a USB cable trying to use it corded, to no avail.
Then I connected it through bluetooth to an apple tv 4k. Got it connected. Fired up Steam Link. Was able to play Assault Android Cactus, but Gas Guzzlers Extreme was simply a failure even after loading a community profile.
Moonlight streaming with a Steamcontroller on apple tv is still a complete mess as the buttons are completely wrong with no way to fix it or remap them (steamcontroller 2015 has this very same issue).
Then connected it to my PC again and used Playnite (my launcher aggregator tool) to launch a steam game of Pinball FX2, since it uses very few buttons. It went well up to the point where I wanted to quit the game. Playnite and Steam started fighting, menu's popped up on the screen which I could not get to close with the gamepad. Actually I could not get playnite to close with the keyboard either so I had to go find the process in taskmanager and kill it.
I have to say, these things work pretty much all on the OG Steamcontroller 2015.
Are the issues because the Steamcontroller 2026 does not have any form of Xinput when not directly attached to steam? Yes I think so..
It is a bit sad because when I am at the PC I game with keyboard and mouse. It is only when I am gaming on the TV in the living room that I want to use a gamepad. And on the TV I play all sort of games (Emulators on Recalbox, but also moonlight steaming PC games from my main pc (steam/ubisoft,epic,..) and moonlight streaming some heavy emulation (xemu,rpcs3,..) as well.
So right now, the Steamcontroller 2026 feels like a one trick pony to me: playing through PC+Steam using steam input only.
The OG Steamcontroller 2015 is currently way more useful and versatile since it can handle Xinput too.
What I also tried is check if the 2015 SC can connect to the new 2026 2.4ghz puck since it can handle 4 gamepads apparently. Maybe there is a way that I do not know, but I could not get it to work myself.
That's my experience after messing a few hours with the new Steamcontroller.
If I am somehow able to get it to work with Recalbox, I will definately post the solution here.
