Well they've set there stall on it as it's part of their campaigns now.

It's worth noting that on NES (at least for Mario) the main action* button is the outer one which is why making it A makes sense.

* I nearly wrote fire button here but in Mario fire is B which is confusing in this context.

This is my father's thread

Here's a pack-in:

Yossarian wrote:

Here's a pack-in:

I know it was a pack-in, but it was a late gen pack in, hence why Saturn was the one I referred to.

mistercrayon wrote:

I think it's bizarre that you have to keep calling it retarded. Such an ugly word for an arbitrary choice.

I mean you sit there defending microsofts abxy, as if it's some more rational thing, when there's no good reason for the buttons to be x and y. Why not abyz? Abcd? Ab12.

I don't really care about that, my point is that if you're going to use letters, using them backwards is a bizarre choice. This isn't about Microsoft's choice beyond them being an example of a company not making this bizarre choice, as has been noted in here, they copied the layout from the Dreamcast anyway, which is where I first used it.

Sega also started the trend of analog sticks in the primary (left hand upper) segment of the pad with the nights 3d pad on Saturn. N64 went central, ps1 dual analog went with the lower spot.

Sega also did analog triggers first on dreamcast.

Vela wrote:

Sega also did analog triggers first on dreamcast.

That's they did, Kudos where due.

Yossarian wrote:

If I'm not very much mistaken, Sega beat Nintendo to market with an analogue stick for the MD. I think it only worked for one game and wasn't released outside Japan, though.

Atari 5200 says hello.

It's not always about being first but implementing it successfully.

Vela wrote:

Retroking has it. The xbox pad should be top row ab and bottom row xy if they are being consistent with western writing.

That could work, but seeing as the B button is physically higher than the A, then I don't think the logic to support that is quite so clear cut.

Also, it wouldn't help the situation that he's complaining about.

retroking1981 wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

If I'm not very much mistaken, Sega beat Nintendo to market with an analogue stick for the MD. I think it only worked for one game and wasn't released outside Japan, though.

Atari 5200 says hello. It's not always about being first but implementing it successfully.

Indeed, I state this more as a curio than anything else.

retroking1981 wrote:

They are a Japanese company though who read top to bottom, right to left so the SNES pad makes perfect sense in that respect. MS is Western which reads left to right, top to bottom. But hang on, Y is above X and B is above A... that's not right... that's retarded!

That's not entirely correct to be honest. Right to Left writing is pretty uncommon after WW2 in Japan, but parsing panels in Manga is still done Right to Left as a hangover from how traditional the narrative image as an art form is in Japan.

I think that's what creates the strange setup of the FAMICOM pad. They often parse segments in order of right to left, especially in instances where there are two columns. This creates a primary and secondary order - given the NES is designed around Mario, with Jump being Primary and Run Being secondary, that dictates the button order - it is also pretty ergonomical too. You can see this design order repeated in the Playstation Pad too - Circle is Accept, Cross is Cancel: Secondary/Primary in order of priority based on traditional multi column comprehension. Nintendo are a company with a long pre-WW2 history, and as such are probably conceived of as a very traditional company with native values, which adds to this design philosophy.

There is some friction though. The choice of A and B as opposed to any other symbol is the real sticking point. The FAMICOM already has roman characters on it in the form of the name itself, as well as the Start and Select buttons. That's the long standing impact of American occupation, the influence of SCAP on internal politics and external trade, as well as the importance of export for Japan and the Lingua Franca being English. That's presumably why SONY is not a Japanese character. The FAMICOM was likely designed to be sold abroad from its inception.   

I'd imagine that Nintendo likely copyrighted every aspect of their pad layout give their desire to control every aspect of their console ecosystem in a time when copying of code and hardware was rife. That leaves a few options for the SEGA pad being different. The ABC layout was perhaps due to an inability to follow the "reversed" layout of the copyrighted NES pad. There's also SEGA's post-war founding and thus it's potentially more modern values. Or, perhaps it's due to an aggressive desire to seize the American and European markets by designing a pad that matches Western sensibilities over 'traditional' Japanese sensibilities. There's also a bit of ergonomics in there too, given the three button layout - the, traditional "ball joint of the thumb over A and pad of it over B" doesn't work with three buttons.

So there's a lot of history, traditional values and so on at play here, all tempered by the power of the Western market. Without intimate design documents detailing exactly what process they went through, it's hard to posit a definitive answer, but I think mine is fairly coherent. As for the XY being above AB on the Xbox pad? Simple ergonomics, they're tertiary and quaternary functions, so they will be above the primary and secondary, regardless of order. There's a lot of things going into design beyond "the correct letter order" as determined by the West. 

The NES being produced right in the middle of Japan's economic boom but also coming from a very traditional Japanese company clearly factors into this whole issue. It most likely won't ever change because of heritage, pride, national identity, and I imagine, a healthy dose of patents.

Re: Tempy's post, it would be fairly amusing if the reason for Nintendo being the only company with that layout was because they patented it.

Also, just coming back to Retro's suggestion for using Roman numerals for a moment, I can't see that ever being a goer for the simple reason that Roman numerals are most commonly associated with traditional clock designs rather than cutting edge tech.

The NES or PC Engine backwards layout was probably confusing for a bit.

From SNES onwards though I've pretty much just gone by colour, so it's not been an issue.