Ever Wondered What The Symbols On The PlayStation Controller Really Mean?

That explains the use of the shapes... but it doesn't explain the colour choices!

If the circle and cross represent yes and no, wouldn't you make those green and red?

Just looks like it was random to me.

If the circle and cross are yes and no, I presume that means circle is yes and cross is no, so, shouldn't the cross be red and the circle blue (or actually green makes more sense here). I'd have had the triangle be blue, the square is fine as pink, the circle green and the cross red. I personally think that would make more sense. But it is what is is.

@nocdaes Yunno, I've always resented the square and circle being within the same color spectrum, because a pink circle and red square aren't dissimilar enough for my brain. This is probably a me thing, but also I am fairly capable person and still have to check. I wish the square was blue.

This PS allocation „O -> Yes, X -> No“ is the same as the SNES allocation „A -> Yes, B -> No“. And all PlayStations in Japan kept this control scheme up to the PS4. With PS5 (the first PS since the creation of SIE), they adopted the Western style.

Who knows the reason for this Western style? Why didn’t they choose the SNES scheme for PS1 back then?

I guessed the same for Circle and Cross, but I would never have guessed what Triangle and especially Square symbolized. Learned something new today.

Two things I'll always give Sony credit for with controllers is making handles popular and using the symbols for the face buttons, which mean I could do a QTE on a Sony controller on sheer reflex, but you ask me to do a QTE on a DC/Nintendo or MS controller and I have to stop and think about which way round all the letters are. 💀

@BulkSlash I am literally the opposite but just for the reasons I mentioned already.

@Max_the_German My favorite layout is the N64/gcn a/b, and many Playstation games also used that layout, especially for stuff like racing games. I remember reading an article about why the Japanese used the reverse layout but I can't remember where. My vitas/psps have all been Japanese so I always have to reverse them.

@nocdaes @RetroGames The Colours and symbols for X and O are both linked to accepted japanese norms.

Circle is the japanese equivalent to the tick/check mark, and is usually red.

X/Cross has the same usage as the ROTW and is usually blue.

So definitely not random. However I don't understand why they swapped X and O for the west but then didn't make it a requirement that all games had to use that system, leading to Japanese developed games not being adapted when they were localised. Pick a system and make that the rule.

Edit: bonus facts. If you did really well on a test, the teacher might turn that O into a flower. Also O is the character used for obscuring parts of a naughty word like we would use ! Or *.

Still effing nonsense.

It's so much harder for my wife, who didn't grow up playing videogames, to use a Playstation controller because there's no logical order to the buttons unlike with letters. And my kids (5 and 2) have to look down at the controller every time they press a button.

And by leaving no space for the diagonals, the Dpad is great for cardinal directions but ***** for Street Fighter motions.

I know obviously people are used to it by now but the decisions behind the original pad were totally arbitrary, and besides the grip shape, which is great, it was designed to be different, not better or more intuitive.

@LowDefAl Ah, then that makes much more sense in context.

@Max_the_German i vaguely remember (so i could easily be wrong) reading somewhere that the western Sony staff didn't think westerners woukd associate 'O' with 'Yes,' but might associate 'X' with 'Yes' because "X marks the spot."

i really wish they had just kept the original japanese setup. regardless of the symbols, pressing the bottom button to confirm and the right button to cancel will always be unintuitive to me. and don't get me started on games which swap the run and jump buttons to follow that convention!

Echs
Not cross!

The fact that is represents "no" means it is an X

funny how this does the rounds every so often. Given the age of the playstation now i thought it was quite common knowledge? Well for at least most playstation owners. But someone out there will not know and everyday is a school day!

Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock! (I'll show myself out . . .)

@RetroGames But X marks the spot

@GhaleonUnlimited I agree. I have an easier time making the switch between Nintendo and Xbox controllers even though they have different letter layouts, but every time I've tried using a PlayStation controller, I can't make the adjustment easily because I don't remember where their buttons are - even though it follows the same general layout as Xbox! I could adjust, maybe, given more time, but it's not like PlayStation has much to offer me at this point because they put nearly everything on PC now anyways, where I can use an Xbox controller.

I've heard this explained before and I've always thought it was misguided. The symbols have remained one of my least favorite aspects of PS controllers and the PS brand overall. I give them credit on other things. The controller grips looked really bizarre in 1995, but I saw the benefit after using them. It's especially apparent to me now if I go back to a SNES pad which is too flat by comparison. And the PS1 D-pad was way better than I thought it would be from looking at it. The construction of the controllers was also interesting. But the symbols were much harder for me to wrap my head around as far as remembering where everything is. When you use something like letters or numbers, if you know where one is, you know where the rest of them are by simple deduction. For the symbols, there's extra layers to that process because the symbols are not natural to remember. And what they symbolize does not really matter in practice. The explanation for triangle sounds especially useless. If they really wanted a specific pair of yes/no buttons, they should have just been color coded to differentiate them from the other buttons. And because of those symbols, the yes/no is the opposite in different regions, which demonstrates what a failure the original reasoning was.

@PikaPhantom

I have a harder time switching between Nintendo and Xbox controllers, because the function of the buttons are reversed.
I've been playing ASM on the Wii U recently and my muscle memory used to the Xbox layout keeps tripping me up.

This seems like a ret-con to me. Originally, didn't the O mean true/yes, and the X meant false/no? That's why you used O to select and X to cancel in a lot of games, before Sony USA swapped. And now, officially X is "yes" and O is "no", which always seemed backwards from the Japanese maru/batsu (yes/no, true/false, circle/square), as Japanese is read from right to left (circle, X), not left to right.

But now they're saying Blue X meant yes and Red O meant no? That would have been back-ass-wards to a Japanese speaker.

@jesse_dylan I think you've misread the tweet/article. It's the same source we've had for years, X and O's usage and colours are based on their usage within Japanese society.

Until as you mentioned, Sony decided to annoy Japanese users.

@Spider-Kev Well, to be fair, you can "cross" something out when it's false...
However, we have the early PS1 instruction manuals on our side!
Early game releases with the long boxes actually spelled out the button names, and sure enough: "EKS BUTTON"

All it took was Sony Europe's community manager making a single post on Twitter, and suddenly everyone switched to "cross".

I just have to wonder: who thought it was a good idea to have the primary button on the right, and the secondary button on the bottom? No human's thumbs reach across the buttons at such an angle!

Nintendo must have already realized the insanity of this by 1990, as they used B as the jump button in Super Mario World... but that's a launch game, which makes me wonder why they didn't just move the buttons around so that A is on the bottom!

Even stranger is that they switched to the more ergonomic setup of B on the left and A on the bottom with N64, but then reverted to the weird layout for systems like DS, Wii U, and Switch.
Meanwhile, Nintendo and PlayStation games alike have been a hodgepodge of B to jump, A to jump, triangle to cancel, X to cancel, circle to cancel, etc. etc., and this still hasn't been fully settled!

@RetroGames indeed it is. Back in the days, circle was confirm and cross cancel. I played final fantasy vii with this button configuration.

@LowDefAl Woops yeah you’re right 😭 Altho now that that’s finally clear, I’m wondering why red means accept and blue means cancel?? Is that a Japanese thing I’m unaware of? Or did I get that wrong now? 😂

This comment section is making me irrationally cranky.

@-wc- George is gettin upset!

@jesse_dylan interesting observation, but as I recall the Square releases used the circle for confirm in their releases for North America too. Not sure why they didn’t localize that too.

@Westone32bit Some definitely did! Final Fantasy VII did, for instance. But by the time of FF X, they were definitely localizing that, too; I don't remember which had that switched between those two release dates, though.

I remember Suikoden did have it localized, but they didn't just swap X and O; they swapped square and triangle as well! I remember that being pretty confusing.

Of course, these days, Nintendo games use A to confirm and B to cancel. Xbox is the same, but the A and B have their positions swapped (and X and Y)..., and meanwhile, of course, Playstation is X confirm and O cancel... so no matter what you do, your brain is always having to convert stuff around, unless you only play in one place...