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.
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.
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.
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.
To be fair, Sega was a US-oriented company long before it was cool, so I guess they may be the pioneers that confused the rest of us ages later.
After all, Sega does what Nintendon’t
Sega controllers predate XBox by a lot and their layout was left to right (ABC/XYZ).
That’s what I meant; but yeah, I think people collectively decided to forget Sega.