Actual testimony taken by a fly on the wall at Sony!s R&D*:
”So, Nintendo has one of these and uhm, it seems to work pretty well.”
”OK, we’ll put one there too.”
”Oh, and they also have this optional rumble that’s pretty fun.”
”We’ll incorporate it right into the controller.”
”Perfect. Wait a second though, the controller now looks pretty fugly with this thing in the middle.”
”...”
”...”
”... Eureka! We’ll have TWO sticks! Incidentally, that’s one more than Nintendo have! That will sound AWESOME on ads!”
”OK, but... what does it do?”
”Don’t worry, some weirdo will figure it out.”
*probably not actual testimony. Also, I can’t really speak to flies.
I got one of those first models with concave sticks and no rumble. Nothing to do with it for a while, but I needed a second controller and thought, why the hell not?