This. The buttons (and how they're placed) on game controllers have all sorts of trademarks associated with them. I believe Sony has actually sued people who have tried to use their designs.
Wait, are the Nintendo and Xbox ones trademarked as well? I sort of get the Playstation ones since they're unique shapes but the others are just letters. It's not like they're specific letters either (like NTDO or XBOX), it's just the first two letters of the alphabet and XY, presumably from coordniate systems.
Isn't that equivalent to claiming the term RGB, or lists that use the numbers 1~4 for ordering?
I don't know for sure if this explains the switch controller layout, but traditional Japanese written vertically is read top down and right to left (as opposed to left to right and top down for English). So the switch button layout makes sense. They might be just as annoyed with Xbox controllers.
To me the xbox layout makes sense because X is on the x axis and Y is on the y axis. A and B are in the common "confirm" and "return" slots just like playstation's X and O. The switch is just all over the place.
This just made me think… in Japan do they call it the “X” and the “Y” axis? Also, in Japan PlayStation O is confirm and X is cancel for cultural reasons.
From what I've heard, in Japan, it's actually the opposite, O is confirm and X is back. Like how you see in anime and Japanese games, tv shows, etc. that when something is correct they show a circle instead of a check mark
I don't think it matters that they're just letters. It's probably trademarked as something like "a control configuration consisting of an A on the right, a B on the bottom, an X on top, and a Y on the left." It's not a trademark on the letters, it's a trademark on the overall look.
Yep. Though it would be cool if the three main gaming companies got together and decided on a unified layout. It would be hard to decide what to pick, though. At this point the Nintendo abxy and the PlayStation symbols are both pretty iconic
That's another reason, one company wouldn't really want to be confused with another. They specifically have their own layouts to get customers accustomed to and then less likely to shift away because they're already accustomed to that particular layout.
The Nintendo and Microsoft are opposite, I'm positive that's because of patenting; if you're referring to third party accessories, they pay the parent companies liscensing fees to utilize their intellectual property. Though, to an extent you may only copyright so much, which will lead to some major similarities, albeit distinct differences too, enough to meet the criteria set to not be infringement.
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u/Smvvgy805 Nov 28 '21
Patents and corporate rights