Less downtime in marathon gaming sessions? I don't know that this was meant to be portable outside of the house, I'd hate having to carry extra batteries with my deck...

Imagine trying to use these with a charging cable attached.

I had the same thought. I'm assuming it has something to do with them wanting the wireless puck for the Steam Controller to be able to charge the controller as well.

Otherwise, maybe there's some hardware reason why making the battery removable in the Steam Controller would be difficult.

This is one of the changes I'm most frustrated with, and one I didn't expect. Maybe it feels worse for me because I didn't expect it, unlike some of the other compromises.

I'll still buy one, but I don't like this change.

EDIT: The other big disappointment that I knew was possible but didn't expect was the loss of Lighthouse tracking.

I think people generally don't use vr everyday, and index controllers had a 6 hour battery life and took 30 mins to charge. This makes it easier to hop into vr on quest 3 which has AA batteries because you don't need to worry about charging 3 devices, only one