Cross media bar in other sony products

[Bobbler]

This sort of thing is what happens when you use some gimmicky, unintuitive naming convention for your buttons. I'm not much of a playstation user, but any instances that require pressing a particular button at a particular time annoy the crap out of me simply because knowing which button is where and what it does doesn't make immediate sense.

The A/B X/Y makes a lot of sense at least in English since you know that letter index increases as you move forward and to the right on the controller. (A/B being the lowest letters are on the bottom left). The fact that major buttons are also identified by sensible and readily visible COLOR (green go, red stop) on other consoles only further illustrates the asinine crap that is the Sony controller button system.

Oddly, I'm the exact opposite. The 360's button layout constantly makes me look at the buttons. I have no idea what I'm doing with it... or didn't, for quite a while at least -- I more or less got it now (since I've had my 360 for several months now). I don't find anything inherently intuitive about it -- it's never seemed any more coherent than any other random naming scheme someone could come up with. Colors don't help me when I'm looking at the screen, neither do letters, shapes, numbers, or anything else visual. About the only controller I can think of that quickened the learning curve was the one on the GC (where the buttons were all different shapes/sizes, so I didn't have to depend on my eyes to figure out what I needed to press).

None of them are "intuitive" really -- it's all a matter of learning the locations and then there's nothing to it. Depending on color coding or anything visual essentially means you already failed -- you aren't supposed to be looking at the buttons while you push them. As long as they are all different (be it a circle or a letter or a color or a number), they are about equal -- there is a learning curve regardless...

 

[ban25]

This sort of thing is what happens when you use some gimmicky, unintuitive naming convention for your buttons. I'm not much of a playstation user, but any instances that require pressing a particular button at a particular time annoy the crap out of me simply because knowing which button is where and what it does doesn't make immediate sense.

The A/B X/Y makes a lot of sense at least in English since you know that letter index increases as you move forward and to the right on the controller. (A/B being the lowest letters are on the bottom left). The fact that major buttons are also identified by sensible and readily visible COLOR (green go, red stop) on other consoles only further illustrates the asinine crap that is the Sony controller button system.

If you can't memorize the location of 4 buttons on a controller, I wonder how you manage to type on a keyboard with over 60 keys?

 

[Fafalada]

The A/B X/Y makes a lot of sense at least in English since you know that letter index increases as you move forward and to the right on the controller

That's all a bunch of bunk. If you have to look at the controller to figure out what you should be pressing, you're already screwing up your game.

When I type on a keyboard there's no natural intuitiveness to "y" being above key "h" - I can type exactly as fast when "y" is swapped with "z" on Slovenian keyboard, it just takes a few minutes for my fingers to "memorize" it.

 

[Planet]

And because the unmistakable natural order of letters make so much sense, Nintendo seems to order them the exact opposite way than microsoft does.

Having played on Sony consoles from (europe) day 1, my thumb doesn't have the slightest doubt where to rush on which symbol. And, btw, look again, they are color coded too (not on PSP though). It's all a matter of getting heavily used to something and then trying something different.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS2 games vary considerably. From going from XMen Legends to DQ8, I keep pressing the wrong buttons for a while, until I switch over to the right mental map.

There is no right way to label a set of controller buttons. It's all done with muscle memory. Some people who work with interactive displays may take some theory over to designing controllers, but it's fundamentally different. What's needed is consistency, so every game operates the same way, just like Windows programs with the unified menus. Once there's a standard, it's simple enough for people to learn.

 

[patsu]

Actually... USB keyboard and mouse works very well with PS3 right now (e.g., Data entry, web surfing, Playstation Store browsing, messaging, XMB navigation using arrow keys, <ENTER> and <ESC>). <ESC> is the universal abort/exit key. Using the controller in US... mostly it's 'O', sometimes it's '^', or both.


For even better keyboard and mouse support...

* In any XMB list, pressing a letter/number key should jump to the portion of the list starting with that letter/number.

* Add (web) browsing navigation style to XMB for pointer navigation (mouse/SIXAXIS/Wiimote type).


In general, they should make the experiences more integrated. Sometimes, XMB feels like a different app from the web browser, the store, ... Once Sony harmonizes this part, PS3 usability will take another leap forward.