So you’re wrapping up a Forza session and Switching over to a date with Mario Kart World, and for the 10,000th time across generations of consoles, you burn a few minutes tapping B when you meant to tap A — and vice versa.
Why must it be like this?!
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| Console | Button Layout |
|---|---|
| Nintendo | X (top), A (right), B (bottom), Y (left) — aka B A Y X |
| Xbox | Y (top), B (right), A (bottom), X (left) — aka A B X Y |
| PlayStation | Symbols: △ O ✕ ☐ (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square) |
This chaos didn’t happen overnight, of course.
It’s the result of decades of small design choices, brand identity flexing, and some good old-fashioned stubbornness.
Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation all decided to play their own game. The letters don’t match, the positions are flipped, and just when your thumbs were getting comfy, you switch consoles and everything’s backwards.
Let’s rewind.
1980s: The Two-Button Era
The buttons we know today, Nintendo kicked it all off with the NES. Two buttons: 🅑 on the left, 🅐 on the right. Simple, and even logical, in a Japanese right-to-left way.
Then Sega showed up with the Master System and went, “Nah, we’ll call them ① and ②.” Definitely logical! Even better, 1 was on the left. Perfect.
And just like that, the controller timeline forked. We had no idea the pain that lay ahead…
1990s: Arms Race of Buttons
Sega added a third button for the Mega Drive (Genesis): 🅐, 🅑, and 🅒 from left to right. Still weird, but at least it was consistent.
Nintendo fired back with the SNES, and this is where things got fancy. They gave us the diamond layout – Y and X on the top left, B and A on the bottom right. Diamond orientation aside, this button order made sense for the Nintendo model.
Around this time, in arcades and at home, fighting games were exploding in popularity.
Gamers wanted more buttons to punch, kick, block and… whatever Chun-Li was doing.
Sega added more buttons to compete: X, Y, Z on top of A, B, C. That’s six buttons, and probably one of the first events to drive cross-platform confusion: same letters, different positions.
Why, gaming gods, why?!
Enter the Dreamcast (aka Sega’s Last Hurrah)
With the Dreamcast, Sega ditched the six-button setup and went with the simpler four-button diamond.
They didn’t copy Nintendo’s orientation, though. They kept their own layout, prioritising a western alphabetical order of X and Y on the top left, A and B on the bottom right.
2000s: Xbox sides with Sega, Nintendo keeps being Nintendo
Here’s where it all comes full circle. Microsoft had been working with Sega during the Dreamcast days — they even helped build some of its software — and when the Xbox launched, they borrowed Sega’s ABXY layout.
So now, in 2025, you’ve got:
- Nintendo: A on the right, B on the left
- Xbox: A on the left, B on the right
- PlayStation: From day one it’s been symbols, but with a functional approach that matches Xbox – the bottom button is the primary one, like A on the Xbox.
Photo by Kamil Switalski
Photo by Rama Laksono
Photo by Robert Torres
Why? Because nobody wants to back down.
And no, patents weren’t really the issue. It’s mostly pride, legacy, and a sprinkle of chaos.
Amusingly, if you ask gamers, many will insist that even though Nintendo was first, the ‘proper’ order should be whatever the majority uses – and so Nintendo should be the one to conform.
What about patents and trademarks?
Surprisingly, this whole mess isn’t because of legal barriers.
You can’t really patent a button layout like “a diamond shape with A, B, X, and Y.” Under trademark law, that’s simply too patently general to be owned by any one entity.
(To be fair, Nintendo did have ‘SELECT START B A’ trademarked, but it was cancelled in 2022.)
Companies can trademark certain design elements and symbols, of course, and that’s one area in which Sony has plenty of form.
That’s why their triangle, circle, cross (not a mere X!), and square are both iconic and legally protected.
So legally speaking, these companies could absolutely align their layouts. Two of the three remaining console makers already have: PlayStation’s X and Xbox’s A, in the same physical position, are functionally identical as the primary button.
Don’t expect Nintendo to change, of course.
They’re the OG, after all, and their console sales are doing just fine without having to make Xbox and PlayStation gamers happy.
And look how much money they’re making off replica controllers for the Nintendo Online platform! Hell, that even includes the Genesis / Mega Drive controller. What a time to be alive.
So, what do we do now?
😂 Nothing. We keep complaining.
But hey, if anyone ever invents time travel, please go back to 1983 and convince Nintendo to put the A button on the left. (No? Okay, hit 1985 and ask Nintendo to go with 2 – 1 instead of 1 – 2.) Let’s go!
Now for a quirky and entirely unrelated reference to 1983:
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