[cesarb]

> but the same can kind of be said about mice and keyboards, too.

AFAIK, even old keyboards (AT and PS/2 connectors) already had a microcontroller, and the same was true of mice. The communication between the keyboard or mouse and the computer was through a serial protocol, instead of the computer directly reading the keyboard matrix or the mouse buttons and wheels. The exception might have been computers with built-in keyboards. But the joystick port (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_port) directly exposed the buttons and potentiometers from the joystick, instead of talking to a microcontroller on it.

[unwind]

Yeah, that was what the "kind of" was meant to shadily cover. Thanks for clarifying.