I'm not saying I like the CD-i.
But I'll defend it just a little bit here.
First off the pads, there's a few different controllers. The one I have is almost identical to a first generation Sega Genesis pad.
Some models of CD-i came with this controller later in its lifespan.
With that said. The CD-i wasn't initially intended to be a game console. It was intended to be a cheap competitor to Personal Computers taking the space, size and at the time incredible amounts of data and multimedia available with a CD-ROM format and providing it to consumers at an affordable price without requiring an expensive dedicated monitor, or many other components that went into PCs.
Once it had totally failed at this task, yes they marketed as a game console and it was terrible at it. But that wasn't the original intent of the product, that's also why the wireless remote isn't a good game controller for example, it was meant for navigating menu's in infotainment, not for playing quick to react action games.