D-pad gamepads

D-pad controller

— the presence of a D-Pad in the design of the controller.

D-Pad is a manipulator designed to move (character, cursor, etc.) in strictly defined, standard directions. The traditional D-Pad consists of 4 buttons — "right", "left", "up", "down"; these buttons can be made either completely separately or as a solid "multi-sided" key (round or cross-shaped). Also nowadays there are controllers with more complex 8-sided D-Pads — they also fall into this category. For more information about this equipment, see "8-position D-Pad", here we note that the classic 4-position options are still more popular: they are simpler and cheaper, and diagonal movement is not required so often, so there are 4 options for the manipulator buttons are often enough.

In terms of application, the D-Pad is a standard, almost mandatory piece of equipment for gamepads (see "Device"). Also, most steering wheels have this function (although here it plays more of a service role than a game), but in other types of game controllers, D-Pads are much less common.