Microsoft calls it the first game controller designed for strategy games. The SC, as I'll call it from now on, represents another bold foray by Microsoft. If I was asked to rank the SC on a weirdness scale, I'd put it together with the SideWinder Dual Strike - a controller designed for FPS games, but that's another story. So what exactly do we have here? Well, at first look...

It looks like an extra large mouse attached to a base with 6 buttons on the top and 3 on the side. Also the main controller can slide along the base to a certain extent on all the important axes, as shown in the picture below :-

This virtually makes it a joystick since it can move in 2 directions and also has a rudder control. You can map the controller movements to individual keystroke macros just like the buttons. But in the future when games support the SC natively, you should be able to use it to scroll your screen view, i.e. scrolling the map in Red Alert 2. As of now, I don't know of any game that natively supports the SC.