Earlier this month, Valve announced its intention to enter the hardware market with Steam Machines complete with Steam Controller. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should really check it out. It’s wild, and totally out there – just like Valve.

Now, you may be wondering – how the hell do I play games with that thing? Well, Valve is here with a video demo that shows how the controller is used in a variety of games. What you’ll first notice is that the controller’s gamepads can be configured on a case-by-case basis. In a first-person game like Portal 2, the two gamepads can be configured to act like a mouse and keyboard. In a more PC-centric game like Civilization V, one trackpad is configured to act as a mouse while the other is configured to act as directional keys.

Like all other new controllers, people are going to be skeptical until their get their hands on it. PC gamers are going to be even more skeptical as no other controller in history has ever matched the precision of a mouse and keyboard for PC-centric games, like turn-based strategy titles. Valve obviously thinks they have finally reached that level of precision, but we won’t know for sure until next year when the first Steam machines launch.

If you want to test drive a Steam Machine and the new Steam Controller sooner, be sure to get your name into the running for one of 300 Steam Machine prototypes. You can find out more about that here.

[Image: Valve/YouTube]