Control button placement

Most gaming handhelds I've seen either place controls toward the bottom or even below the screen which makes sense to me. You generally want them to be as accessible as possible. Valve seem to have taken the opposite approach and stuck them near the top of the device. This makes me wonder about the ergonomics of it all.

I've just watched some gameplay (r/SteamDeck/scjyir), and the dev really seemed to struggle quite a bit with keeping his thumb on the analog sticks, let alone press the d-pad and abxy buttons. The games didn't seem too action-packed either, so I'd imagine it would get even worse if one has to react more quickly, press multiple buttons at once or execute combos.

The button layout seems kinda unorthodox too and matches neither the Playstation nor Xbox controller layout, so I wonder how hard the adjustment would be (albeit less so than about the whole ergonomics/placement thing).

Edit: Looks like I was right lol. Bummer.