But then they shipped with Mario 64 and no one gave a second thought to the D-Pad.
And yeah, I was harsh on the OG iPhone. It's hard being a new design.
Nintendo dove deep into 3d on the n64 and they knew they were going to, but they put the dpad there assuming they'd be as successful as they were with the snes and there'd be a much wider diversity of game types for the platform.
Really though I don't think the design is really much of a mystery and I always wonder how the people confused by it tried to hold it. Did they try to grip the outer handle and reach in to the stick or something? It was never unobvious to me how to hold it or why they did it that way.
Personally I'd rather play 3d games with the n64 controller than the dual shock/analog, in terms of layout, just because the stick is in (one of the) primary position. Modern controllers with stick primary and dpad secondary and two grips are, to me, superior to either for 3d games though.
Other than perhaps the original PlayStation, almost all old gaming hardware has aged far worse than the original iPhone’s industrial design in my eyes. It’s also industry trends I’d argue that aged that design of the iPhone as much as the design itself. Modern phones are typically much larger screened devices than what the market expected in 2007ish. A console is still just a plastic box with ports we shove under a TV much as it was in the 90s.