What are your wackiest ideas for a “universal” controller layout that would appeal to the fans of the Xbox, Nintendo, and PS layouts? You certainly can’t pick one of the three, that would be lazy and frankly unfair for the other two layouts. It’s got to be something that everyone agrees on, something different!
I’ve got a few ideas: NSEW (the cardinal directions), RGBA (colours, also transparent button could be cool…), or maybe CMYK (printer ink colours for ease of printing)
What are your ideas for the universal controller layout?
I always thought the colors were dumb. Imo this is what the color scheme should be:
A/Circle=Green=Accept=Go
X=Red=Cancel=Stop
B=Blue
Y=Yellow
Put them wherever you want lol and I guess square feels blue and triangle feels yellow (kinda looks like an upside down y and a y has 3 points). It also satisfies the original intent for ps buttons without being confusing since x and circle are represented with the commonly known colors for those things. I personally prefer the asymmetrical Xbox stick/button layout.
And actually now that I’m thinking about it it’d be kinda cool if the triangle was flipped and the square had a horizontal line through it, then circle could be like a lower case a. Then you have both ps AND Nintendo/Xbox labels XD
It already exists.
Steam controller, but swap the buttons/touchpad locations. Everything else is perfect basically.
X on the right so nobody is happy
Introduce ‘Ω’ button
placed in the center of the dpad
wipes and restarts connected device on press
touch sensitive
The Steam Controller was perfection.
People don’t want to hear it. But you are right.
Everyone could learn a thing or two from the Steamdeck. The twin sticks, the touch pads, the double shoulder buttons, the four on the back, the overall ergonomics, it’s really great to use.
Bring back octagonal gated analog sticks.
a modular controller with options for steamcontroller pads. 2 joysticks. 2 dpads. 2 sets of 4 buttons. still got triggers and paddles and every thing is customizable.
cool, but I would imagine the controller to be pretty chonk
if its modular you can add and remove bits. plus you can 3d print the opensource parts so it can be as chonk or as smol as you like
THAT would be cool
I would go with the design of the PS5 controller but with ABXY instead of circle square etc. And do it right way around like Xbox not backwards like Nintendo. Oh and go with an actual cruciform D-pad instead of the four buttons that are actually a D pad under the plastic thing. FFS.
Whatever the layout, bring back the Dreamcast VMU. Maybe we don’t need the external memory anymore, but the little display with extra game details was so cool.
I mean, I’d go back to Sega-style six button layouts.
Also, leverless controllers. Better for your hands, more effective. The one example I’ve seen of adding dual sticks to those is… not going to replace pads for 3D games any time soon, though.
I think for the button layout, if you keep the cross shape you can do directions (up/down/left/right). NSEW could work. Ultimately, though, the most rational one is Xbox and the most universal is PlayStation (in that it doesn’t rely on a specific script). Frankly, at this point Nintendo’s “we give up” solution of showing four dots with the relevant one highlighted may be the only way to fix this whole situation.
Also, also, D-pad above forever. Only valid choice. Fight me.
It would have to be modular and customizable. Whether the buttons can be removed and swapped around like key caps, or the D-pads and sticks are on interchangeable units, users would have to be able to arrange things a few different ways to get literally everyone on board.
I like PS glyphs because they are language-neutral and look more distinct, and I think, it would be point one in my choice. Point two is color-coding that helps most people (but may adjustments for accessibility?). Point three although ofercomplicating things is direction-coding, as it’d be generally nice to have a > shape near them, so they’d read intuitively from the first playthrough.
My initial thought went for second set of arrows. Like d-pad has one kind ⬆️➡️⬇️⬅️ and buttons have the other 🔼▶️🔽◀️. But I doubt it would be consisntetly great in different games with their own visual approach to portraying them.
Having more direct sign buttons on the other hand ✅️❌️❓️❕️ may be limiting to what devs want their game to be as it implies the check button is always approval, etc.
Math symbols, tho, ✖️➕️➖️➗️🟰 can be a universal and neutral set to pick from, especially if avoiding the confusing X button.
Also, ♤♡◇♧, in connection with older modes of gaming, but it should be tested for illegebitility between them and compared to arrows as three of them have vagualy triangular shape.
Also loss buttons.
I like the suits!
as someone who has never had a playstation, knowing now the original semantic meanings of the playstation glyps i think they’re the best compromise IF we go back to their original meanings. they had it right the first time with hlw intuitive it is to have O being confirm and X being cancel, and it’d keep Nintendo people somewhat happy because confirm is still the far right button. maybe they could also release a version with reversed or hotswappable buttons, using the current PS layout (which in this case would be O on the bottom and X on the right) to throw a bone to the xbox crowd because this compromise doesn’t do anything for them otherwise
or like another commenter suggested, we throw out the diamond button layout, too tainted by the competing standards of the console wars, and use the gamecube layout like God intended
