When video game controllers and bad design met

Video games and design have a long story behind them. I'm not talking just about the video game design itself, though that would be a very nice topic for another entry in this blog. No, I'm talking about consoles and, therefore, video game controllers design.

I've seen consoles design evolve through years, at least the ones I can remember, since consoles and video games are much older than me. From the squared and basic PS2, passing through the more rounded and nice PS3 to the nowadays and (again) square-like PS4. Nevertheless, this usually responds to a marketing campaign that seeks to sell more units just because it looks more advanced or futuristic from the point of view of that moment.

However, the real evolution in consoles design has come with video game controllers. There's been as much controllers as consoles, probably even more, but in these we've seen a real evolution towards usability, comfort and user experience. Here I'm going to present a couple of examples regarding video game controllers that had a really bad design but nevertheless users had to get used to them if they wanted to play with whatever console came with them.

Nintendo 64 Controller (1996)

In my personal experience with controllers, I genuinely think this one is the worst by far. The first thing you can notice when you see this controller is that it has three handgrips, which is quite weird since last time I checked humans still had two hands. That is, obviously, one of the main problems of these controllers: users didn't know how to hold it. If you use it the regular way, holding it from the external handgrips, then it's almost impossible to reach the central stick, unless you have really long fingers or you don't mind to make yourself a fissure.

The thing with this controller was that users didn't know that video game developers for Nintendo 64 did have in mind the controller's distribution, so they designed games so it wasn't necessary to use all the buttons on it. Depending on which buttons they had to use, users should hold the controller in one way or another, existing three different positions to do it. This wasn't obviously quite usable, since users had to remember the way of holding the controller depending on which video game they were playing. Plus, it wasn't really comfortable when one of the handgrips to use was the middle one since there was little space for both hands.

The other main problem of this controller was the central stick. As you can see in the picture, the "trunk" of the stick was really thin and it usually didn't last more than one year or so.

Lastly, the handgrips weren't as rounded as they should be for them to be really comfortable, so after some minutes using them your hands were really hurting.

Xbox Controller (2001)

First ever video game console for Microsoft, first stumble for them in the video game market. In the moment they landed with their brand-new console (when Sony, Nintendo and Sega were in control of the market), Microsoft was really criticized because of the size of both their console and its controller. Nevertheless, this controller was nicknamed as "the fatty".

As you can see, the controller itself was really big, in addition to being also quite heavy. One really needed big hands to hold it properly and it was difficult to play more than a couple hours (probably less) without having to stop because your hand was either really hurt or asleep because of its weight.

In the other hand, buttons were really bad distributed, so it wasn't quite intuitive how (or, most accurately, where) to press them without looking at the controller. Plus, they were so close to each other it wasn't strange to press more than one each time, especially if you aren't really thin-fingered. And there was one more problem, maybe even more annoying than the previous ones: those buttons weren't quite responsive. So, to sum up: you could have to look at your controller to know which button you had to press, then (after you knew which one to press) you could wrongly press more than one button at the same time and finally, because they were unresponsive, you could have press the wrong one since you pressed two but the one you wanted to press didn't work.

More of the same problem applied to the cross-piece buttons on the left, since it wasn't really a cross-piece.

Nevertheless, Microsoft heard those critics and that same year they presented a new controller for the Xbox, the Controller S, in which almost every issue that we have exposed here was solved.

PS4 Controller/Dualshock 4 (2013)

And just to wrap up these blog entry, I wanted to talk briefly about the PS4 controller. Yes, it's quite new and yes, it's not uncomfortable (well, at least for me, some people says it's too lightweight and they prefer the heavier Xbox One controller) but it has some design problems that I would want to address.

The first thing is that the sticks were made of a bad quality rubber, so a lot of people ended with a stick-less controllers after a few months playing with them. This was easily solved by buying some protectors to put them on, but if you buy a new console or controller, you don't want to buy anything else cause it's already deficient.

On the other hand, we have this huge panel on the center of the controller. It is supposed to be a touchpad, but nevertheless it is almost useless and I can't remember of any video game that makes use of it. Result: it's used as a mere big button for game menus.

Finally, there's a big fancy ligtht on the back of the controller. The color of the light changes depending on the videogame, though usually it sticks with just one or two colors (except for those times in when the developers of some random game though it would be funny to make use of them like in a disco). Yet you can configure the brightness of the light, users are not able to completely turn it off, resulting in a useless (but fancy) loss of battery which, by the way, lasts quite less than its predecessor from PS3 (Dualshock 3).

Just like Microsfot did back in 2001 with its Xbox controller, Sony released a new version of the controller in 2016, although they didn't address any of these problems except for the ones regarding the rubber of the sticks. In fact, in my personal opinion, they made the third one event worst, since now the backlight of the controller can also be seen through a little stripe in the front touchpad.