Does the controller layout for all the systems/pc need to be unified?

Played switch, which I haven't for a while and got whiplash pressing buttons wrong, not to mention I think the switch controllers aren't perfect. I guess I transition well to the ps4 vs xbox stuff. Not sure if it's due to me PC gaming more. So biases. Still think Switch controller is amazing but have trouble using them (buying the actual controller helped). I tend to over talk on these and cause people to TLDR and leave or make an English mistake people hate lol...so...what is it, how do you all feel.

You got whiplash playing a switch

Recently I've seen more games let the player choose between Xbox and Playstation buttons, which is nice, especially when it's not auto-detected. I think it's easy enough to learn both, plus Nintendo buttons if you want to do that. At least there's not O, U, Y, A too.

I would like the option to switch confirm/cancel around on Nintendo systems.

I don't even know what this means exactly. If you mean should Nintendo just give in to convention and swap their button labels and confirm/cancel buttons then...yes they should. But on the other hand Nintendo doesn't like to admit it is influenced by other trends in gaming (even though it obviously is in a lot of ways) and there are a lot of Nintendo only gamers who are used to their layout so I doubt it will happen.

If you mean should every system have the exact same controller then...no. I mean obviously you need the joycons for Switch portable mode and you need specialized controllers for VR and motion games. Additionally while I would prefer that Microsoft added gyro controls to their controllers and Sony had Microsoft style analog triggers it's good for there to be options.

I have a friend who gets a lot of hand pain from some controllers and not others and the Dualsense took time for me to adjust to. Having options isn't just a fun variety thing, it's an accessibility thing because not all controllers work with all hands.

I mean it's pretty much only Nintendo that are the outliers at this point.

Nintendo standardized the ABXY layout on the SNES and then the Sega Dreamcast switched around the A/B and the X/Y. In order to fix this, you need to go back in time and convince whoever designed the original Xbox controller to keep the Nintendo layout and not the Dreamcast layout and then all will be good.

...for me personally, I don't seem to have much trouble adapting to Switch games. However, when I plug my Switch controller into my PC and try to play games with it, I get mixed up pretty bad, and I don't know why this is. I only did that a few times before deciding that the Switch Pro controller really should stay with the Switch, even though I like how that controller feels in my hand a lot.

I dunno, I've never had a problem with it. When I pick up a Nintendo controller I know where the buttons are, same with the other 2. There's just some remote part of my brain that activates and I know how to adjust to it.

@justin258: You're leaving out a key part of the history here. And that's Sony screwing everything up with its weird shape buttons. Not only did Sony not use letters but it also had DIFFERENT buttons for "accept" and "cancel" in Japan and the West. Apparently in Japan X made more sense as a cancel button while O made more sense for "accept" but in the West because we uses X to cross off boxes on forms to make our selection it was confusing so it got swapped. That meant that for most games the lowest button on the diamond was accept in the west while the rightmost button was cancel, and that was swapped in Japan.

THEN Nintendo made the N64, which did not have a standard diamond, and the PS1 was dominant in that generation, meaning that by the time Sega made the Dreamcast the actual standard in the West was bottom button accept, rightmost button cancel, and Sega followed that.

Further complicating things is the fact that in Japan text is read right to left while in the West it's left to right (depending on how you define the west.) That's also why the A button is all the way on the right in Nintendo controllers, which doesn't really make sense from a Western perspective. So if A is accept and B is cancel it makes sense that Microsoft, a Western company, would have their buttons configured left to right, and the A button thus on the bottom of the diamond, matching Sony's layout (which was dominant at the time with no actual competitors on the market, since N64, again, did not have a diamond) in the West.

So it's not really Sega's fault. They were following Sony. And Microsoft was following Sony and what made sense in the West. It was the right decision at the time, and Nintendo should have caved in the Gamecube era, when the Sony layout was REALLY dominant (and by that time Sony had standardized somewhat to using its Western layout even in Japan) but Nintendo is Nintendo so here we are.

ETA:

For the N64 the A button was the bottom button and the B button was shifted to the left and up so "bottom button is A/Accept" was totally standard across all systems at that point. It's also the lowest button on a Saturn pad.

And Gamecube controller's button layout is just weird, so "Microsoft should have followed the SNES even though everyone else in the industry including Nintendo was not" is a HOT TAKE!!!!

I do wonder if we will ever see a generational shift in the adoption of a new or emerging controller-based scheme like we saw with dual-analog movement in FPS games. I guess the only possibility of such a shift is in VR gaming.

@zombiepie: I think we'll see some tweaks and have, such as the more widespread adoption of gyro aiming (to the point where even Microsoft uses it for Quake II on platforms that support it even though Xbox does not) and some game moving toward the obvious truth that the most common actions like "jump" belong on the shoulder buttons rather than in the diamond because you can press shoulder buttons at any time but can only use the diamond comfortably when not using the right stick.

But I think the flipside of this is that control schemes are getting more and more configurable over time, especially with pro controllers adding paddles into the mix, so there's less pressure to change the defaults since everyone can set the scheme they like.

And while it's not based on the controller per se, I think that Street Fighter VI's Modern controls may be a watershed moment in fighting games and get those developers to rethink whether the quarter circle and charge motions are really necessary at this point, since they are a barrier to entry and at the highest skill levels all the competitors have mastered them anyway.

I doubt we're moving away from the basic dual analog controller design any time soon though. It works well for so many types of games there's a reason it hasn't fundamentally changed since Sony introduced its dual analog controller in the late 90s.

In Japan, the circle and X are universal symbols for yes/positive/true and no/negative/false respectively. The circle is basically Japan's (and Korea's) equivalent of the checkmark and there's even a special red variant of the circle that looks like the one you see on Playstation controllers. The shape/symbol buttons totally make sense in context to it being a console made for the Japanese market initially where the circle and X are literally part of everyday life. I'm not sure why they decided against using that universally because once you learn that tidbit of information the whole layout and their choice of symbols makes way more sense. It did seem partially like western developers ignoring what Japanese devs were doing for their menus. Had everyone been on the same page then perhaps the Nintendo and Sony layouts would still be the same with the menu confirmation button being the one on the right.

As for the actual question at hand, I think the controller layout is mostly standardized/unified already at this point. If you ignore what symbols are on the buttons of a controller, almost all of them have nearly the same base functionality now outside of the Switch controllers not having analog triggers. I switch between a DS4 and a Switch Pro controller when I use my Steam Deck hooked to a TV and even if games don't detect the controller right to swap the symbols, it will still work if you assume it's using an Xbox-like layout.

The only thing I wish is that companies would give a Gamecube-like layout another go. Having a main button for big/common things then pivoting your thumb to other buttons for lesser used functionality is both clever and surprisingly comfy and it's why the Gamecube controller is still one of my favourites.

@ben_h: Sony had weird ideas about the symbols on the controller. X and O as "cancel" and "accept" made sense but the triangle was "view" and the square was "menu" and only a handful of games did anything like that because of course most games actually need the face buttons.

I agree that it would have been better if Sony had just standardized across the West and Japan, but they didn't and the West won out because it's the bigger market and because of how much console development shifted here over time. I don't think it was Western developers ignoring Sony because with a few exceptions all the Japanese and even first party games we got here used X for accept and O for cancel.

There are some other differences between the controllers (such as gyro and Sony's continued insistence on including a touchpad nobody uses) but they are mostly the same.

I agree the Gamecube layout was smart, but it is only good for some kinds of games. It's great for Smash, horrible for Street Fighter. It made a lot of sense for Nintendo games but it's less versatile for more complex games where there is no "main" button. I think that's the primary reason it got left by the wayside. Nintendo moved on to the Wii (and the Wiimote was one of the worst controllers for standard games) and then with the Wii U decided they wanted to compete with other systems and went standard. Then with the Switch they needed symmetry between the Joycons so they had to go with a diamond. And it seems they're stuck that way as long as they want to make hybrid consoles.

You can get Switch controllers shaped like Gamecube controllers though. So at least we have that.

i don't think it Needs to be , But it would make things easier , every time i play a nintendo game i get all sort of messed up cause of not just button placement being swapped vs xbox but because confirm/cancel is the other button like old japanese rpgs used to be in years past. honestly i think its mostly just weird like that cause everything adopted the western controls vs east but idk

I don't have super strong opinions about buttons, really. I can get used to most layouts and sometimes even find learning new locations for old things part of the fun of playing a new game.

But one of the primary reasons I barely touch my Switch and have never seriously considered owning an XBox is offset analog sticks. I truly find it uncomfortable and unwieldy.

@nodima: That's kind of funny because I have a friend who absolutely hates the PlayStation layout and loves offset sticks.

Personally after over 20 years of playing both ways I don't even notice. I maybe slightly prefer offset because it feels a little strange when my thumbs touch while I'm playing on a PlayStation controller but it's not an issue.

If offset thumbsticks are actually stopping you from enjoying the Switch there are a lot of other controller options out there that don't have them. 8BitDo makes a bunch, for example. They exist for Xbox too but not in the same number/quality. 3rd Party controllers have gotten pretty good, especially if you are willing to pay for a premium controller.

I would not be off put if every game allowed form teh player to re-map the buttons with a "quick switch" option for Nintendo Pro, DS5 and Xbox. I think the benefit, really isn't for common player, but just having a baseline functionality to re-map controllers is great for people who's hand cannot press button or move sticks as well - it opens most games up to everyone.