It’s weird to think that the Nintendo Wii came out in November of 2006. Here I am, typing up this article a little over eighteen years later, and I can still faintly recall getting our family getting the console one year at Christmas. At eight or nine years old, I thought it was one of the coolest things ever. Motion controls were fancy and new, and they worked pretty well. Plus, being able to just point at the screen to choose options made things feel a heck of a lot simpler when it came to navigating menus. It felt like I was looking at the future.

Almost twenty years later, that was incorrect. If I wanted to look at the future of controllers, I should’ve looked back at our PlayStation 2.

Controllers have gained more features since then, of course. Some motion detection, physical feedback, special buttons to open up apps or take screenshots, and so on. But they’ve all had the same design. Two analog sticks, one on the left and one on the right. Four face buttons, a directional pad, two shoulder buttons, and two triggers right underneath those. As far as that basic layout goes, the modern PlayStation and Xbox controllers just swap the location of the left analog stick and the directional pad.

Looking at the Nintendo Switch, those controllers fall into the same pattern, they’re just split down the middle. Four face buttons, two analog sticks, four directional buttons, two shoulder buttons, and two triggers beneath those. I will give them credit, the ability to detach these controllers is very innovative, with a couple of shoulder buttons hidden on the “inside” that are covered up when using them together. Even so, the basic layout is the same as it was before.

This even pops up with Virtual Reality controllers. Take the Meta Quest 2 controllers.

Two sticks, four face buttons, two shoulder buttons, two triggers, and touchpads instead of directional pads. Even for a different medium, the controller layout feels almost too familiar.

So, what gives? Why has all this happened? Simply put, these are all good controller designs. It gives you things to do with both of your hands and pretty much all of your fingers, while also offering a good amount of different options when playing games. Other things have been tried in the past to mixed results, and it’s not strange that the industry has settled on a reliable, effective design. Experimentation can be costly, messing around with standardized control layouts can throw people off, and it means that cross-platform games don’t need to twist themselves around to make up for lost buttons.

But I have to wonder if this standardized layout is having some negative consequences. If there are possible designs out there that could feel more natural to use, or provide more functionality without overwhelming the user. And, on the flip side, if we’re limiting the kinds of games we can play on console due to controllers not having enough buttons or not having the right layout. I know I’ve played games on PC that use over half the keyboard, and aren’t going to be the same on console.

Is this a topic you’ve given any thought to? Feel free to share your perspective in the comments below, or join the Boss Rush Discord and add to the discussion there.

Featured Image: Xbox Wire

Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast about Video Games

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