So it turns out the PS4 does have software authentication...

[Dr.Henry_Killinger]

wilco said:

SanAndreasX said:

I've been gaming since the Atari days, and the controllers they had back then were god-awful. The NES controller was a revolution and there wasn't any going back to big, bulky Atari-style joysticks.

And other than the NES days, when Nintendo had almost total control of the industry, there's always been debate over controllers. The Genesis had a three-button controller that crippled it somewhat when it came to the most popular third-party games of the 16-bit era, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. The SNES had enough buttons to play those games and was in fact nicely laid out for Mortal Kombat. So Sega made a six-button controller with the Street Fighter II layout. There was actually a fair bit of debate among gamers about 16-bit controllers. Then there was the N64 with its analog stick and the Rumble Pak, which caused Sony to release the Dual Shock controller.

The NES controller was perfect for its time period. As games evolved the best controller fot its era actually was the DualShock. Yes, despite this thread, I do think the DualShock is a great controller.... for platformers. That is what it was designed for and that is what it was perfect for. Back in those days I never had a problem with the DualShock because it was perfect for the kinds of games being made. Unfortunately the design has not evolved enough since then. Now that platformers are no longer the most dominant genre, it makes no sense for the d-pad to be taking up the most prominent position on the controller. 

The reason the d-pad is their is so that the controller remains symmetric.