Two handles, sixteen buttons, c. 2020s
A hollow plastic shell shaped to two hands, holding a radio, a rechargeable cell, two motors and a surprising number of springs. Five or six screws hide on the back, some under the grip panels; once they are out, the two halves unclip and every button simply falls out of its hole.
The half of the case you look at. Its holes line up with every button, so the buttons are only held in place by being trapped between this shell and the board.
Made of Injection-moulded ABS or polycarbonate-ABS blend, with a textured finish moulded into the grips.
The fine stipple on the grips is not added afterwards: the steel mould itself is textured, by chemical etching or laser, and every shell comes out of it already patterned.
Est. cost to the maker $0.8–2.5
Sheets of soft silicone with a little dome under every button. A dome collapses with a soft click when pressed and springs back when released: it is the button's spring and its switch at once.
Made of Silicone rubber; the black pills inside the domes are rubber loaded with carbon so they conduct.
When a dome collapses, its carbon pill lands across two interleaved copper combs on the board and connects them. The pill wears very slowly, which is why rubber-dome buttons can survive millions of presses.
Est. cost to the maker $0.1–0.4
Two joystick modules. Each stick sits in a pair of slotted yokes at right angles: tilting it turns one or both yokes, and each yoke turns a sensor that reports how far it has gone.
Made of Steel frame, nylon yokes, carbon-track potentiometers (or magnets and Hall sensors in some newer sticks), a tiny push switch for clicking the stick, a rubber cap.
Worn or dirty carbon tracks inside these potentiometers are a common cause of stick drift, where a character creeps with nobody touching it. Hall-effect sticks read a magnet instead and have no track to wear.
Est. cost to the maker $1–4
The controller's brain and radio. It reads every switch and sensor hundreds of times a second and sends the result to the console or PC over 2.4 GHz radio, or over the USB cable while charging.
Made of Glass-fibre and copper board with gold-plated contact fingers; a microcontroller, a radio chip, a charging chip, a crystal and a few hundred tiny passives.
The wavy gold line in the corner is the antenna: just a copper trace whose length is tuned to the 2.4 GHz band, where a quarter wavelength is about 3 cm in air.
Est. cost to the maker $4–12
The four buttons on the top edge. The bumpers are simple clicks; the triggers are analogue, so the controller knows how far each one is pulled, which is how a game can tell a light touch on the accelerator from a stamp.
Made of ABS paddles, steel pivot pins, torsion springs, a potentiometer or a magnet and Hall sensor at each trigger pivot, small boards and flex cables.
Each trigger turns a sensor at its pivot as it moves, and a torsion spring wound round the same pin pushes it back. On many controllers that spring is the part that wears out first.
Est. cost to the maker $0.6–2
A rechargeable lithium-ion pouch cell, wrapped and taped, with a tiny protection board on one end and a two-wire plug. It sits in a bay in the back shell, behind the board.
Made of Lithium-ion polymer cell (graphite, lithium cobalt oxide, a polymer separator) in an aluminium-laminate pouch; a protection board; insulating tape; copper wire.
The small board taped to the end of the cell is a protection circuit: it disconnects the cell if it is over-charged, drained too far or short-circuited, three things lithium-ion cells do not forgive.
Est. cost to the maker $1.5–4
Two small DC motors, one in each handle, each spinning a lopsided weight. The wobble of the weight is the rumble you feel in your palms.
Made of Steel cans with permanent magnets, copper windings, brass or tungsten weights, rubber sleeves, copper wires.
The two motors usually carry different weights: a heavy one for a deep, slow rumble and a light one for a fast buzz, and games mix the two to make different feelings.
Est. cost to the maker $0.6–2
The back half of the case, seen from inside. Ribs stiffen it, round bosses take the screws, and pockets cradle the motors, the battery and the trigger pivots.
Made of Injection-moulded ABS or polycarbonate-ABS blend, often the same resin as the front shell.
The faint circles dotted over the inside are ejector-pin marks: the spots where steel pins pushed the still-warm part out of the mould. They are put on the hidden side on purpose.
Est. cost to the maker $0.8–2.5
Prices are rough ranges of what the manufacturer pays for each part, pieced together from published teardown and bill-of-materials estimates. They vary a lot between models, years and order sizes, and they leave out assembly, software, research, shipping and profit. The drawing shows a generic device, not any particular model.