I’ve asked many people this question, including video game industry people and professors who teach video game design, and no-one has had any answer. It has been an incredibly obnoxious thing since it happened, and it’s only gotten worse over time. The question is:
When Microsoft were designing their original XBOX controller they pretty clearly took the labels for the buttons from the Super Nintendo controller (I can’t think of any other reasonable explanation for their controller have the exact same 4 non-sequential letters). BUT, they decided to flip the positions of A and B, and X and Y, thus confusing everyone who plays both Nintendo and Microsoft consoles forevermore. Why did Microsoft do this?
If anyone has any info on this it would help me a lot.
Basically the Xbox controller is a hybrid of the PS1/SNES controller. They took the design of the PS1 dual shock controller, and flipped the left stick and d-pad. They took the buttons from the SNES. The thing is though, on Japanese PS1 controllers in games the O button (where B is in Microsoft, A is in SNES) is commonly used as the “Confirmation/Action” button and the X button (where A is in Microsoft and B is in SNES) is the “Cancel/Back” button. But on American PS1 controllers in games it’s actually swapped, so X is confirmation/action and O is cancel/back.
I feel Microsoft took the American button philosophy of making the “X” button the confirmation button, but because that would make it the B button on an SNES style pad and they obviously wanted to make the “first letter” the “confirmation button” they swapped the SNES button layout.
I’d be happier if they just gave the buttons names. I don’t have much experience with consoles past the NES, but I do sometimes play games with my nephew, or other folks. And when the game says “Press the triangle button to refazzle your confib”, I always have to take my thumbs off of the controller to look down at it and see which button is the triangle button (by which time the aliens on the screen have already refazzled my confib for me).
I had thought of that too. The layout might make more sense from that perspective. Microsoft took a Japanese controller and, being American, swapped it around in a way that would make more sense to an American engineer. It’s just a WAG but seems plausible to me.
And the Dreamcast was originally built to run Windows CE, a Microsoft OS, in aversion specially made for the platform. Sega eventually used a simpler OS, but games could still include Microsoft OS, making it easier to port PC games.
Of course, this only takes the OP’s question back one step. Why did Sega choose this button layout? However, I do note that, during the creation of both the Dreamcast and the Xbox, Nintendo was not using the SNES layout on its consoles. Neither the N64 nor the GameCube used it.
I’m the weirdo that really liked the Dreamcast layout. Not so much the buttons (eventually muscle memory kicks in on any controller) but the overall design.
But Japanese is read left to right, isn’t it (or top to bottom in vertical text)? ETA: Oh, when it’s in vertical lines, it’s top-to-bottom, right column to left column. When written horizontally, it’s left-to-right.
Japanese can be written left-to-right, top to bottom, or it can be written top to bottom, right to left. The latter is, I believe, more traditional.
That said, I always assumed the lettering was just from the NES controller. I believe it used B A to communicate that A was the main button, and B the secondary button.
In the toploader NES, they move the A up diagonally a bit. So, when they made the SNES, they kept the position of A and B and added X and Y, sticking with the outside-in approach. But then they apparently realized that B now became the best main button, and designed Super Mario World around that, moving run to Y and adding a special jump to A.
In the N64, GameCube, and Wii Remote, they go back to having A be the main button. It’s only when they implement the classic controller for the Wii and created the DS (where they added two buttons to the GBA, which just used B A) that they go back to the SNES layout, which they’ve kept ever since.
In the case of the Wii, the labeling was doubtless influenced by the fact that, if you hold a Wiimote sideways, the layout is the same as for the original NES, useful for playing the archive of vintage games available on the Wii.
How does giving the buttons names help you if you don’t know the layout? If I say “Press the X button” you’ll still have to look down at the controller since you don’t know where it is.
Really, the Dreamcast controller followed the design of the previous Sega consoles. Master System had AB, Genesis had ABC, and Saturn had XYZ and ABC. Dreamcast just dropped the Z and C.
Aha. Forgot about the Saturn’s layout. Or, heck, the “6 button” Genesis controllers for fighting games. That does make sense as a natural evolution. And, as I said, the SNES pattern wasn’t in use at the time, so they didn’t have any reason to think it would be confusing.
Since the question is (I believe) answered, I’ll now link this relevant image:
