You may have already noticed that the Shift does not come with any bundled software as such. There is a leaflet within the packaging however that points you to the website to download drivers and software. So upon testing the Shift, I took a quick visit to:
http://steelseries.com/support/downloads
Within a short space of time, the software - named SteelSeries ENGINE was installed and I was ready to customise the Shift. Now what I will say from the outset is that this software isn't as intuitive as it could be. It took a little longer than expected investigation to get tweaking the Shift board - but as SteelSeries did claim, this board is full customisable. There seem to be no bounds at all with the mapping of keys to commands and macros. The use of layers is especially useful if you happen to run out of keys to assign commands to!
Below is the main screen that you are presented with upon launching the SteelSeries ENGINE. An overview of the keyboard is shown. From the bottom of the page you are able to choose between what layer you want to alter on that particular key. To the left hand side is the profile - so you can have multiple profiles setup. This is great if you take part in varied genres as not all games follow similar commands or layouts.
The main screen you are presented with upon launching the software
To test out the usability of this software I experimented with assigning keys, macros and commands. Shown below, I assigned the key [1] at the very top of the keyboard to launch a game installed on the test system. So when pressed, this key will launch the execute file for Assassin's Creed 2. Very handy! It's simple to setup, all you do is select the key, choose from the dropdown ActionType list whether you want to assign a macro or application launch and then specify the path. You can also label the key, colour it and change the font which is a neat feature to distinguish certain regions on the keyset.
Assigning a key to launch an execute file
Another element of the software that is worth a look is the ability to launch a profile against a game or EXE. This as I have mentioned is very handy because you could have a profile set up for World at Warcraft. So when the game launches, a profile is activated especially designed by yourself and then another profile can be set for Medal of Honor - when this game is launched a completely different profile is activated. And so it is evident that with the Shift there are many facets to its ability within the software. Not only can you tailor the choice of commands to specific profiles across different games, but you can have these profiles launch when the game is launched, this is a very useful and innovative feature.
Profiles can be activated upon launching your favourite games
