One thought on “Anyone got an explanation for this?”
Here’s my theory.
The bottom right is, what, the Wii U controller? It’s face buttons are the same as on the SNES, which evolved from the NES. The NES only had “A” and “B” and was ordered in Japanese reading order, right to left. The SNES needed more buttons, and laying them out in a row made them hard to reach, so why not make two rows of two? All of the buttons are the same distance from each other, but the square layout is still a little awkward. The solution? Rotate 45 degrees to the left!
The Gamecube (bottom left) actually has a lot of the same logic, but instead of evenly distributing the space between button faces, they chose a “main” button (“A”) and wrapped the others around it. From a user experience perspective, it’s clear which button you’re supposed to rest your thumb on, and “B”, “Y”, and “X” are all nearby in different directions. The buttons are more friendly to people who are new to using controllers, but it also means your thumb has to travel farther to get from “B” to “X”.
The Xbox 360 controller (top left) followed the same logic as the SNES controller, but ordered the buttons from left to right – English reading order – instead.
With the Playstation (top right), Sony wanted face buttons that would work equally well with any language, so they used symbols instead of letters. “X” has a dangerous, active look to it, so they put that into the “main” button’s place. A triangle is like an arrow pointing up, so that goes up top. I have no idea why they went with a circle and a square (with really similar colors, to boot) for the left and right buttons; that seems like a miss to me from a UX perspective.
Dan Felder 
Here’s my theory.
The bottom right is, what, the Wii U controller? It’s face buttons are the same as on the SNES, which evolved from the NES. The NES only had “A” and “B” and was ordered in Japanese reading order, right to left. The SNES needed more buttons, and laying them out in a row made them hard to reach, so why not make two rows of two? All of the buttons are the same distance from each other, but the square layout is still a little awkward. The solution? Rotate 45 degrees to the left!
The Gamecube (bottom left) actually has a lot of the same logic, but instead of evenly distributing the space between button faces, they chose a “main” button (“A”) and wrapped the others around it. From a user experience perspective, it’s clear which button you’re supposed to rest your thumb on, and “B”, “Y”, and “X” are all nearby in different directions. The buttons are more friendly to people who are new to using controllers, but it also means your thumb has to travel farther to get from “B” to “X”.
The Xbox 360 controller (top left) followed the same logic as the SNES controller, but ordered the buttons from left to right – English reading order – instead.
With the Playstation (top right), Sony wanted face buttons that would work equally well with any language, so they used symbols instead of letters. “X” has a dangerous, active look to it, so they put that into the “main” button’s place. A triangle is like an arrow pointing up, so that goes up top. I have no idea why they went with a circle and a square (with really similar colors, to boot) for the left and right buttons; that seems like a miss to me from a UX perspective.