Why is it that Nintendo has their buttons as
X
Y A
B
but Microsoft uses
Y
X B
A
?
It seems like an inconvenient way of doing things that just results in muscle memory mixups. And Sony's no better just because they don't use letters; Playstation games aren't even consistent on which of O or X is accept or cancel!
@Vordus Hmm. It seems like something that should be industry standard.
Still doesn't explain Sony's inconsistency, though.
@Rosemary As for the O and X switching, I know that O in Japan is yes and X is no (literally making those buttons confirm and cancel) but I'm not altogether sure why it's reversed in the West. Possibly because X marks the spot. Alternatively because it was the 1990s and X was cool.
@Rosemary I'm unsure how it started, but Japanese convention appears to have been to separate "confirm" (on right) and "primary action" (on bottom), while Western convention was to combine them.
This led to the X/O discrepancy on PS with different games doing different things, and then the Dreamcast started what we'd now call the "Microsoft layout"
@Rosemary If I had to guess, "copyright" for controller design.
@Rosemary Patents. Can't copy competitors button configurations, even though it would make that easier.
@Rosemary the lack of consistency is down to patents and trademarks, iirc. Certainly the Sony shapes are a trademark, whilst the SNES pad button arrangements were patented.