I love the Dreamcast but going from the Saturn 3D pad to the Dreamcast pad always hurts. The parts feel cheap on DC alongside not having 6 face buttons, a hugely downgraded dpad and an analog stick that just never really felt great to me in terms of grip and general feel.
Then there's the issue of it lacking a second stick (imagine Quake 3 or Unreal with that stick), only 2 triggers and no L3/R3 type function on the stick it does have. Its true that developers designed around it but the fact that they had to do so at all is just disappointing. Sega just seems to have been so clueless when it came to where console gaming was going. Not recognizing 3D was the future with Saturn until the last minute and then not recognizing that dual analog was gonna become standard.
If the Dreamcast lived a longer life to receive more multiplatform games people would see just how damning the Dreamcast missing up to 4 buttons and a stick really is. Again I adore the DC but even when compared to the Saturn 3D pad it feels like such a downgrade. The DC pad feels slightly more ergonomic in terms of size (plus I love the colors) but Saturn's had better buttons, a best-in-class dpad as expected and a far comfier stick imo. Just wish Sega would have copied that pad's quality instead of downgrading every aspect and adding nothing new aside from the (very cool) cart slots for stuff like VMUs and rumble. But again, Sega was bleeding money so I get that it had to be a cheaper unit.
This is purely subjective but I also tend to prefer heavier controllers so the DC pad being so light is a turn-off tho ultimately not a big deal once you have a couple carts in the back.
Wire placement was never a problem for me though. No clue why people still say that like it ever actually comes up while playing. I struggle to think of a scenario where having it in the front vs the back becomes a problem.
Can we stop calling it the Xbox layout, and start calling it the Dreamcast layout? They did it first didn't they?
The layouts of DC and Xbox aren't that similar though, are they? They share a left stick and dpad placement but aside from that they're just different beasts.
In any case, Sega helped out on the Xbox so I'm sure the similarities are because of that relationship. History also tends to remember the victor and in casual spaces most people don't have any experience with the DC so I understand the confusion.