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'Father of the Xbox' Seamus Blackley issues Twitter apology to AMD over last-minute switch to Intel CPUs

juice

I think at this point, we've got two main evolutionary paths.

In one corner, we have Nintendo, who took the distinctly "functional" NES controller and rounded it off to create the SNES controller. Sony took that, and added wings to make the original PSX controller, after which it's evolved to include analog sticks, vibration motors and much more besides, such as the motion controls, touchpad, speakers, lightbar, microphone, variable-resistance triggers, etc.

Then we have Sega, who started with something similar to the NES controller on their Master System, which then morphed into the original three-button Megadrive/Genesis controller, before mutating into the six-button version (as needed for Street Fighter II, the big killer-app of 90s arcade and console gaming). And from there, it got tweaked for the Saturn, before Sega decided to start dabbling with the newly rediscovered concept of analog controllers with the massive UFO-shaped controller which they released for Nights.

And it's from that controller which the Dreamcast controller was derived, and in turn, the Dreamcast controller was the key inspiration for the OG Xbox controller, which then slowly evolved all the way up to the current Xbox Series X.

In the meantime, and perhaps oddly, Nintendo has done what it always does, and gone off to one side with it's own unique interpretations; the SNES controller was effectively completely discarded in favour of the "trident" controller for the N64, only for the Gamecube to bring in a mutant hybrid of the two designs.

Things then got a bit wierder with the Wii - the Wii Remote was little more than a wand with NES-style buttons stuck on one side, which made it distinctly unergonomic as a controller. And their standard Switch controllers are pretty much a straight clone from their Gameboy/DS systems.

Though interestingly/ironically (for given values thereof), Nintendo's "Pro" controllers for the Switch and Wii U more closely resemble Microsoft's controller designs than Sony's.

For me, I think Sony has gone down a bit of a unwise path with their controller design. A lot of the newer stuff built into it was a reaction to the wild success of Nintendo's "motion control" stuff on the Wii, but once the novelty of waving stuff around wore off, few if any gameplayers retained any interest in it. E.g. Sixaxis flopped miserably, and the number of games which make effective use of the touchpad as anything other than a Big Red Button is pretty small.

As a result, much of the tech in the controller is hideously underutilised and is arguably just a huge waste of resources on all levels...

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