Valve shows you why the Steam Controller is so cool

“We kind of went overboard, and built one of the largest fully automated assembly lines in the US”.

From injection molding of the case parts through assembly, testing and final palletizing of packaged controllers for the trip to distributors, Valve‘s video is amazingly detailed and very well made.

But wait, there’s more, as Valve also implemented support for non-Steam games, support for portable configurations, in case you want to play some games at your friend’s house and bring you’re own Steam Controller, better support for controlling your HTPC system, along with a Controller HUD so you can see the input generated by the device while playing games.

Especially as viewers familiar with Valve’s Portal games might be reminded of the Aperture Science research facility, which is overseen by AI GLaDOS who’s not a fan of humans. As a Wired report points out, given the new controller design, Valve wanted to be hands on with the manufacturing as well: “When we first started designing hardware at Valve, we decided we wanted to try and do the manufacturing as well”.

Unless you’re exposed to it on a regular basis, it’s easy to take for granted just how advanced robotic manufacturing really is.

For FPS players, the update adds gyroscopic aiming, which allows players to combine the controllers mouse-like d-pad with physical movement to aim more accurately.

The Steam Controller has been available for about a month, and Valve celebrated by releasing a lengthy update on the state of the custom hardware. The “Mouse region”, allows players to hotkey a certain section of the screen so they can, for example, easily switch between using a minimap and the main action.

Future updates have also been promised along with the upcoming Steam beta client, courtesy of the source.