Dead Kennedy

Just food for thought: some places didn't experience the boom of 1980s and 90s videogames. I'm in South Korea right now, and damned if anyone would recognize Mario or know what Street Fighter is (I've yet to see anything resembling Nintendo here, except an imported DS lite). PC games dominate this country, and the kids I teach talk about Starcraft and Warcraft all the time. When I go to a PC room, I can see at least 3 people playing World of Warcraft. I don't play the game (might someday) but it certainly seems like a force to be reckoned with... though I do find one game being so exceedingly popular to be worrying.

I really don't like the idea of having two analogs at different heights like that. I was always glad the Dualshock still has the D-pad in the central location like that, reminds me of a SNES controller (which are still awesome). I haven't really played the X-box or Gamecube much, but I must admit, it feels strange for me to have the two analogs on different elevations like that when you really have to use the both of them.

One neat tweak or 3rd party could be switching the location of the D-pads and face buttons for the analogs. Since in a lot of first-person shooters or action games you only use face buttons to switch weapons or input less critical commands, I could see that working. You're using the shoulder buttons for most things anyway. They'd be more like option buttons then, and your thumbs wouldn't have to reach to the centre of the pad like the current Dualshock for the analogs you're using as the primary controls. Hope someone tries that someday, I'd pick that pad up for sure. Anyway, just some thoughts.