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I can't remember which game it was (something on the Switch, so maybe a Nintendo game) where the game itself told you which button to press by showing four circles on screen (e.g. next to the speech bubble) and only one of these circles is filled out, so instead of a letter, you know you have to press the right button or whatever... I really like this design choice because it's so intuitive
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Playing games on pc and getting xbox button hints while using a Playstation or Nintendo controller is a special kind of frustrating. Like anything else, you get used to it, but I think I would like the position based hints you describe a lot better.
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I think it’s all the Switch games, or most of them. It’s part of the system font. It’s at least any game that can be played with a single joy-con because the traditional layout doesn’t match the labels in that configuration.
Nintendo is generally good at this part of design. Back in the GameCube days, all the buttons were different shapes, sizes and were easy to tell apart by feel, so they just used icons of the buttons. In the N64 days, X, Y and Z were all triggers in different positions, and the C buttons had arrows on them so you could tell by the icon which was which.
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The "by feel" of Nintendo buttons started on the SNES. X/Y were convex, A/B were concave.
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Most Nintendo Switch games do this. I think part of why is you might be using a pair of Joy-cons or a Nintendo brand controller with the Nintendo ABXY layout, 3rd party controller with the Xbox ABXY layout, a sideways joycon with ABXY buttons but rotated 90 degrees including the labels, or a sideways joycon with unlabeled buttons.
There’s no way for the game to consistently the way your controller is labeled, but it can know which of the 4 buttons needs to be pressed based on location.
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As someone who mostly uses an xbox controller and occasionally uses a switch, I could use this too.
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First thing I did on my steam deck was to change it to Nintendo layout haha
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I got so sick of getting confused switching layouts that I went and got GameCube layout joycons for my switch. I really liked the wavebird controllers.
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Between PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and Nintendo again with the Gamecube, the X has been in all 4 cardinal positions.
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Man, why did they not keep the Gamecube layout? That would help with memorizing, too, if the buttons actually felt different...
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Happens to me too.
On steam, I have every controller that I might use mapped to the Xbox layout, just so that I don't have to change my muscle memory.
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Dude, I use a switch controller on my PC so I feel ya.
The analog sticks are literally impossible to start drifting. https://gulikit.com/productinfo/925509.html
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My girlfriend has gotten mad about this in the past. I'm like hold the run button then press the jump button. She would get angry and tell me to say which buttons those are. I would really have to think about it, when playing a game I associate a button with the function and forget which button is what.
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Even that gets switched around sometimes. I hate it when games use the bottom button for run/attack and the right one for jump.
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What button is it?!
I don't know hold on! Pretends controller is in hand. Presses thumb hmmm left and down. Okay what console is this? Square and x? X and A? Whatever the hell Nintendo is?
Left and down buttons!
It doesn't work!
Figure it out!
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As someone who switches between Xbox and switch pro controllers, the struggle is real. And I've been playing video games my whole life.
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I used to call it the Zelda machine, but now that factorio is on Switch, I guess that isnt quite true any more.
I go between PS4 and a switch pro control often, and it's not that they all use the letters / symbols for different buttons, it's that Xbox and Sony agree what button position is used for what as default, enter, back, etc.
Nintendo breaks that symmetry, and put the enter button on A, so when I go to watch a movie on playstation I'm constantly exiting the menu because that position is O, the back button for Playstation.
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Yeah I really don't understand why the hell they have to make it so different. Why do they need to distinguish themselves in this way? All it does is fuck up our gaming experience.
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I think one of the early game systems got a trademark or patent or something for the button configuration. Iirc it was the SNES, but that could also just have been some adolescent bullshit kids told each other on the playground.
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Switch and PS3 here. It's just as difficult. Especially since the buttons for "proceed" and "return" in menu functions are reversed.
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I get to where I remember it as "up" or "right" rather than X or square or whatever.
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Is it just me or has someone gone through and down voted every single comment in here?
Edit: actually every Lemmy world post is showing all comments as having 0 points. Interesting.
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There's either a core contingent of professional haters, or there's a single simple smarter-than-the-average Lemmy admin bot doing the downvoting, because I swear to god every post that's on this site for more than a few hours gets at least one downvote.
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Yeah everyone is just set to zero, no matter how innocuous the comment. So a bot makes sense
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Why does Nintendo use a backwards button layout?
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A better question would be why Microsoft went with a nonstandard layout when they designed the Xbox controller. Nintendo had been using the A-to-the-right layout since 1990.
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Patents, probably. A needed % of deviation.
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I believe because because they consider the outside buttons to be more natural to press first, then you work your way in.
Even starting with the NES controller, button A was primary and on the outside.
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Division between console camps. "No, mine is the right layout!" Frustration when switching, creating a soft lock in effect.
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I was thinking, "I need this for the first 2 hours every time I switch to/from a Nintendo game."
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The real question is why they deviated from the GameCube controller layout. Throws me off all the time when learning a new Switch game. "Y is on top" is something deeply ingrained in me from those days.
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I always assumed it's because they are from Japan and there they have a lot of things right to left. For them it may seem natural to start at the right and go left.
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It thought of that but the old Sega controllers were ABC XYZ.
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The real answer is that nobody knows because nobody wrote it down.
The most likely reason is because the old game and watch was a single button where the A was on the original NES (famicom) and that was the primary button, then the secondary button, or B, was placed slightly inward where it was assumed it would be used less.
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I've seen a video with the history of all of the button layouts
It's a long enough video and just goes through the history of different layouts for different controllers and tries to reason why they are what they are.
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Thank you! I'll make sure to give it a watch.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/-E9Uw3lhWsI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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I think the real answer was actually Japanese reading right to left, and applying that to alphabet buttons. What I find more interesting is the insistence that A must be the Accept button and B the back button; Nintendo games and OG Japanese games in general tend to use that layout, including PlayStation X and O (which to be fair makes even more sense for no/yes). US games afterwards flipped out, even for PlayStation games.
Really, Microsoft changing that up is genuinely evil to anyone already gaming, although I believe Sega also was left to right, but their three/six button layout doesn't count. Not sure how they handled accept/back though.
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Sega had the dreamcast with an "A on the bottom", basic xbox style layout about 3 years before the xbox came out, as an extension of their genesis six button layout. With how friendly sega has been with microsoft historically, and especially the similarities between the classic "duke" controller and the dreamcast controller, the increasing focus on online play, I think maybe there's a through-line from the classic sega button layout and the modern xbox button layout.
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Holy fuck I'm not the only one. My partner and I watched The Last of Us and I wanted to play the game. He had it on his ps4, which I have never played. I made myself the same thing with the dumb ass square, circle, triangle, dodecahedron layout on the PS controller. He laughed at me too :C
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Ho do you confuse an X for a dodecahedron?
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As a guy who has been gaming for decades, don't feel bad, I still look at the controller every time it says "Press X to do thing!" even thought I know by muscle memory what every button does, as soon as it references a button or keyboard key by name it's like my brain just flows straight out my ears and I am suddenly an old grandma using technology for the first time, hunting and pecking for each lettered button.
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You must be trolling her the buttons are swapped!
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No they're not. The Nintendo button layout has A/B and X/Y swapped from the Xbox one, and she's clearly playing Super Mario Oddysey
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Fun fact: XBOX, Playstation and Switch all have an "X" button. And it's in a different position for each of them.
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First off, genius and I don't know why I never thought of this! So smart. So obvious.
Second, what game is she playing?
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Looks like Mario Odyssey
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It's definitely Mario Odyssey. Also, I recommend it, it's fantastic.
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I'll never get over Nintendo's decision to not have the button letters alphabetical like Xbox controllers do (or even just use shapes like Sony). Whenever I play on my Switch, the Y X buttons almost always throws me off, heh. I know Nintendo is Japanese and they tend to write from right to left, so I'm guessing that's how it ended up like that initially.
Edit:
Since a lot of folks are asking how they're alphabetical, I simply mean A comes before B and X before Y. I'm not saying they're alphabetical entirely (since if you read all of them clockwise/counterclockwise then it obviously doesn't make sense), just on their own individual "lines," e.g. X and Y are on their own "line," as well as A and B. It's not entirely logical when you think about it, but that's just how I and a number of others think about it. It's a subjective thing, I suppose.
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to be fair, nintendo set that standard before both microsoft and sony were even in the console gaming space.
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Tbf hasn’t the ABXY layout of nintendo consoles been consistent since the snes days, predating xbox? Unless your argument is that you wish they flipped it for american consoles a long time ago or something.
Also that interpretation behind the ab/xy difference kinda blows my mind lol
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Yeah, I don't fault them for sticking to their original layouts. Maybe Xbox et all should have used numbers instead of letters. Or symbols, I really like the PlayStation's symbols.
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Even the NES was B to the left of A.
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Maybe you're right on the Japan thing, I always thought it was about distance from your thumb. Like A is closest and most common, then B, and some games mostly only use those, and then X, Y, and Z are for menus or less common actions, and of them, x is closest to your thumb. Makes more sense on an N64 controller or GameCube controller, and then the switch controller is just keeping the letters as consistent as possible.
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When going counter clockwise starting from the bottom, the Xbox controller reads: A, B, Y, X.
It's not alphabetical unless you're reading it like a lightning bolt for some reason. If alphabetical is what you want, a mixture of both would be ideal, making it: A, B, X, Y.
Besides, Microsoft are the ones that changed the layout, not Nintendo. The confusion when switching controllers is likely by design.
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Besides, Microsoft are the ones that changed the layout, not Nintendo. The confusion when switching controllers is likely by design.
Sony also made their bottom button the default "confirm/execute" button and the side right button the "cancel/backout" button. It just feels more intuitive to me.
I've been gaming since the late 80s, so I understand Nintendo was the "first" of the current 3 hardware sellers. Doesn't change the fact that they're the outlier now. And it's not like their controllers have even had the same layout more than once, the SNES and Switch being the only two to share a relatively similar button layout.
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How are they alphabetical?
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This is adorable.
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This is genius. I'm going to copy it
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Was thinking the same thing. Suck it, stupid quick time events!
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I think I find myself wanting a little bit of a tactile dot or something on the button, so as to more easily intuit which one to press. You could even retain the switch's ability to flip around the controllers, if you just put all the tactile dots on the outer radius of all the buttons. Like, put a little bump on the top of the top button, put a little bump on the bottom of the bottom button, etc. The only thing I can't really figure out is how you might refer to that in a game, or refer to that visually in a way that makes sense, other than maybe just building that association over time. But yeah, having them be distinguishable tactily is, I think, a good idea.
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If your plan was implemented a simple graphic of a circle with a dot in the corresponding quadrant would work.
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I need such a diagram when I am playing a PC game using a Nintendo controller because they're the exact opposite of what the Xbox controller guide in the game will say. 😬
At least with a PlayStation controller, it only shares X as a face button and I am more likely to hit square on a PS game than the actual X on my controller when prompted to hit the Blue X on an Xbox because my X is green.
Was that as confusing to read as it was to write? Good.
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If it makes it easier, you can tell steam to use the Xbox layout for whatever controller you use. My PS4 and 3rd party switch controllers are all "Xbox controllers" to steam so that I don't get confused.
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That is the issue though. The Xbox layout is reverse to the Nintendo layout. So when it says press X in game for the xbox, it's actually Y on the Nintendo pad.
There is an option to reverse that specific to Nintendo controllers so that Y functions like X and B functions like A, though.
Honestly, it would be ideal if developers put all controller prompts in the game and had an option to set it to the one you want (even if you're not using that particular controller). I have played exactly one game that did this, and I don't even remember which one it was now. But I loved that option.
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The controller that I'm using (Vader 3 pro) solves this for me. It uses the Xbox layout and also has a switch mode.
The trick is that in the switch mode, the face buttons are bound to their Xbox counterpart (e.g. A is B, X is Y, etc..) which makes following screen prompts much easier.
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Lmao after a few weeks let her play something on an xinput controller, just for the reaction
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Love.
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I could use something like this - I use a ps3 controller on PC and lots of games show the Xbox buttons by default.
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I don't have this issue with playing PS and Nintendo games because PS wasn't dickish enough to use ABXY in different positions like Microsoft. Everyone jokes about X being in all 3 layouts, but the PS one is actually called "cross" and doesn't look like an X from a font, so I don't get them mixed up.
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I need one of these when I'm playing switch too.
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Chrono Trigger's ZABIE was what solidified it for me
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ngl I need that
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I'm repulsed by this and I'm not sure why.
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That's just mean. But really funny.
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How is that mean? She's playing a Switch game and that is the Switch controller layout.
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You just believe in humanity more than I do. It's gotta be mean somehow. If she's on the Switch and that's the Switch layout, it's because the husband just wants to distract her or make fun of how she looks down at the controller. The meme also suggests that the husband made the meme, so just publishing the meme and turning his wife into a meme is pretty cruel and harsh. I mean, is this what humanity is? Now we turn our loved ones into memes making fun of them on the Internet? So glad you don't love me. I mean, if you loved me, maybe you'd make fun of me in a fucking meme.
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