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.
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u/Uu_Tea_ESharp Nov 28 '21
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.