They throw around the word 'analog' a lot, but I'm not seeing how that applies here. Typically, buttons are a digital affair. Do these buttons have continuous states, like a trigger? The article never explains this.
IIRC the PS2's dual shock 2 had pressure sensitive buttons. It wasn't a feature used by a lot of games. Nowadays only the shoulder triggers are analog I think.
It's a shame, really. For example, Metal Gear Solid 2 used this to great effect. If I recall correctly pressing square on the control would raise your weapon but not automatically fire it until you actuated the button all the way? It was finicky, but very cool.
I hated how they worked. The buttons did not have enough travel in them to be comfortable to use in this way plus the way the thumb sits on the buttons it is not a very comfortable way to control pressure like with your fingers on the shoulder triggers. I am glad the Dual Shock 4 got rid of them and just has two decent shoulder triggers.
I always thought more games should have used the gamecube shoulder buttons' feature. Analog and then a click before the bottom which allows it to be used for subtle followed by accurate/sudden actions. I can only think of two games that used it... Mario Sunshine (button was probably included just for it) and Eternal Darkness. Does anyone recall if a shooter did this for aiming on gamecube? I didn't play many shooters on there.
For automatic weapons, yes, but it was even neater for handguns. Square raised the weapon, releasing quickly fired, easing off slowly eased the hammer back. It was a really neat trick.
I'm imagining a big reason for "pressure sensitive" is that it has no thumbstick. Obviously the intent is that the left touchpad is to substitute for a thumbstick, but some stubborn gamers will insist on using the d-pad-ish buttons. So say you're playing a game designed for a thumbstick on the left button-pad, and the game requires a light-touch to "walk" like assissin's creed or Mario 64? The pressure-sensitive buttons provide that.
The original Xbox buttons were also pressure sensitive. Developers did not use this feature much, and it was eliminated in the 360 controller. Only a couple of the original Xbox games couldn't be ported to the 360 because of the lack of analog buttons.
What's a use case for having these on a Steam controller? Most PCs don't have analog buttons so I don't see why a controller made to play PC games would have them, though I guess the feature doesn't hurt.
