First of all, I don't have a problem with traditional game controllers. I welcome an input device that's held with both hands, with a direction pad on the left, some buttons on the right, maybe a few shoulder buttons on top. We don't need the almost iconoclastic, fresh interface of the Nintendo Wii to play games. But if we are to have a traditional controller, it should be a good one, a simple and elegant one that has clean functionality, a clear purpose, and sound logic in its construction. And despite more people using the Playstation controller than any other in the last decade, despite its de facto acceptance as the standard, traditional game controller, despite Sony's numerous, minor revisions - its design is embarrassingly inadequate. And not only in comparison to the design innovations its competitors have introduced, but how it eschews natural interface design at a fundamental level.

Yeah, we're all used to it by now. But is it really that comfortable, simply to hold, compared to its competitors at this point? While its plastic housing assures more substance and grip than previous, 'flat' 16-bit controllers, it does not naturally mold around my hands. There's no cozy curves to rest my palm in, no grooves to compliment my fingers (which end up wrapping around the back ridges of the plastic, trying to find a natural grip). My pointer fingers find their way to the top of the controller, along the four shoulder buttons. However, there aren't any little valleys in the plastic to rest them in, and they end up just...floating there, hovering over those four buttons, wondering where they should go. The Playstation controller doesn't feel like it's attached to my hands, or functions as an extension of them... it feels like I'm holding onto a piece of plastic.

Now that I'm holding onto the thing, I have to rest my left thumb somewhere on the face of the controller. The most natural position is one where no effort must be made to move my thumb at all, so it lies across the controller at roughly a 45-degree angle. Conveniently, this places it right across the directional pad. That's nice until we remember that the majority of modern games use the analog stick for virtually all movement and selections. To reach that analog stick, I have to stretch my thumb down a full inch to the lower right, so that it's at more of a 20-degree angle. Although this takes more effort, it's nevertheless the 'default' position most games require. This also means the sensation of control over it is weaker, as the most natural forward push of the thumb will tilt the analog to the upper right rather than upward. It's as if I'm holding the controller at an angle that's impossible to correct. The whole problem stems from when Sony created the Dual Shock version of the controller with two analog sticks, choosing to place them symmetrically on either side of the controller... despite that the left analog will be favored for most games. Every other modern controller places the analog stick in the default position.

Once I have my thumb on the analog, then I have to try and keep it there. The analog's surface, although slightly textured so that it's not completely smooth, lacks any protruding dots, ridges, or indentation (as the Xbox and GameCube controllers have), thus my thumb is more likely to slide around. A more difficult problem to describe is the strangely loose, floaty feeling of the analog, as if it's difficult to establish bearings when tilted away from the center. Additionally, there are no grooves along the outer edges for it to hook in the eight cardinal directions.

For those games that do rely on the d-pad, Sony's proposition is a curious one, as the pad consists of four raised buttons rather than a standard cross. In reality, the cross is still there, just tucked underneath the outer plastic. This means my thumb must run across small gaps between buttons while never connecting with a central part of the cross to rest on - not only is this less comfortable, but it makes pressing diagonal directions awkward and ham-fisted. Using the d-pad for a 'rolling' motion, as is often important in many fighters and shooters, is also unnecessarily difficult. Is there any game that benefits from this design?

Moving over to the right side of the controller, the first question is where to place my other thumb. This is non-trivial because of the controller's adoption of the infamous but entrenched 'diamond' arrangement of four face buttons. While this design offers no clear button for the thumb to rest on by default, more confusingly every button seems to be treated the same. Each is the same size, the same shape, and is marked with an ambiguous symbol. Although this diamond arrangement is present on other controllers, at least the buttons are designated in a less confusing way, such as the Xbox's more welcoming, bright green 'A' button. Even the Super Nintendo, which Sony borrowed directly from, has a more elegant design by making two of the buttons concave and a different color.

Taking a closer look at the symbols on each button reveals an even more arbitrary design. Two of the symbols - 'O' and 'X' - are the most likely candidates for basic commands, whether for in-game actions or moving forwards/backwards through menus. 'X' itself is a confusing symbol to use, as it might suggest canceling/crossing out, or perhaps confirming/checking to proceed forward. The 'O' button is at least more clear, and the most logical symbol to use for confirmations. Nevertheless, this symbol is colored in red, which is more commonly used as a cancellation color. Thus, the button that ought to be for confirmation is colored for cancellation, and another button makes reasonable sense for either confirmation or cancellation. Confused yet?

The other two symbols aren't necessarily much better. The triangle is, reasonably enough, pointing upwards and is the top face button. It, too, might be associated with cancellation (it's often used as an eject symbol), yet it's bright green, the most logical color for confirmation. The square button, colored purple, also seems ambiguous and could easily be confused with 'O' at a glance.

To put this in perspective, when's the last time you played a GameCube game and didn't know which button would advance through menus?

The most telling sign that the face button designation is a user-interface disaster is that no convention has developed for everybody to follow. Some developers have 'O' confirm and 'X' cancel, while others have 'X' confirm and 'O' cancel, while others yet have 'O' confirm and triangle cancel! Without playing a game there's no way to know which button will advance through its most basic menus. It's something that nobody should have to think about, but yet, just to select my file, my eyes must wander around the screen, looking for a key that states which button confirms. Some games don't show a key, so I must simply guess. And when switching between (often very similar) games, I have to re-orient myself with a particular scheme. I cannot count the number of times I've hit a button to choose a file and been sent backwards to the title screen.

Even Sony has been unable to develop an internal convention, as their Japanese and North American Playstations use the opposite buttons for confirm/cancel on system screens. Some developers follow these arbitrary regional conventions, while others develop a convention within their company regardless of the region. For the end player, the only convention is that there is no convention. And for the world's most popular videogame console, saying that is an embarrassment for the industry.

I was surprised when I learned that every face and shoulder button on the controller has analog sensitivity. In theory, it seems like an elegant way to add optional functionality. The only problem is none of the buttons - not even the shoulders - feel like analogs. They give the impression of typical digital buttons, and thus fail to give the user appropriate feedback to how far in they've been pressed. Not surprisingly, I'm not aware of any game that has dared make this functionality mandatory. The Metal Gear Solid series has attempted to integrate it in an optional way, although the result has been inconsistent due to the problem of accidentally pressing the button too hard.

Okay, this is a flimsy reason, but I needed to fill up space...as apparently Sony did by including a select button on the controller. I think we all figured out back on the NES that such a button was redundant clutter. Though many games simply don't use it at all, other developers are tempted to assign a function to a button simply because it exists. Thus the misleading 'select' often triggers peripheral, esoteric functions that could be streamlined through other submenus or shortcuts instead. At the least, let's just rename the button CODEC and move on.

When Sony first unveiled their third videogame console, they proudly advertised 'welcome chang3'. Yet, as far as I can tell, every one of the aforementioned problems will not be fixed with the Playstation 3 controller. It may now contain next-generation motion sensors, but to still be crippled by design blunders made twelve years ago with the original Playstation is extremely disappointing. I can think of three reasons why Sony's allowed the problem to persist.

1) Backwards compatibility - Hundreds of games, all playable on the PS3, have been built around the flawed controller.

2) Familiarity - Like the design or not, most people have adjusted to it and associate it with the Playstation brand.

3) Universal design - Most games are still made around a traditional controller design and can be mapped easily (if not ideally) to the diamond layout. It's in Sony's interest as the current market leader to support as many games as possible.

Although these reasons may sound passable, they're based around an introverted perspective of the industry and the assumption that anyone who uses the controller had already used it in the past - or had better adapt to the club. Should every future Playstation use the same controller just so it can have these 'advantages'? Why not produce a new controller and simply support the old one for backwards compatibility? Why not use letters and appropriate colors to designate buttons, as the competition does, rather than risk alienating valuable new players with the current, arbitrary interface? Why not swap the d-pad and analog stick so it's standardized for the majority of games? I have to wonder: how long must this continue?