Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/09/sony-insists-the-x-button-is-a.html
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The unanswered question, however, is why they switched the functions of the X and O buttons for the Western release of the PlayStation.
On a Japanese console, the O button is used to confirm menu choices, and the X button to cancel them.
On a Western console, it is the other way around.
No-one knows why this is.
If you try and research it, you’ll find a bunch of people smugly telling you that the reason the buttons are configured that way in Japan is because they associate a circle with affirmative/correct in the same way we do a tick mark, and they associate a cross with negative/incorrect.
Which is fine, but doesn’t explain why they’d switch them.
Sure, we don’t have the positive association for a circle, but the idea of a diagonal cross meaning “wrong” or “cancel” is very well established here; it’s not as though we have a positive meaning assigned to the X symbol.
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This is at the same level of the creator of GIF saying it is pronounced “jif.”
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How about “X marks the spot”?
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Which makes total sense since the word the G stands for is “graphic” (pronounced “jra-fik”).
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I have heard that theory espoused before, but does it really seem to you like that is such a strong association that it outweighs the one of X as “cancel” within a computing/iconography context?
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And? I don’t see the problem.
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Saltire!
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They are all pizza.
Pizza Slice, Pizza Box, Whole Pizza, No Pizza.
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I call it the “Greater Than Less Than” button
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There is no acceptable argument in this discussion.
If you try to argue with them, you lose.
The only proper answer is too laugh enough to make them stop talking.
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DOX Box???
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X is the times symbol. O is zero. The 3 sided one is delta. The four sided one is “end of proof.” Sony is trying to make math fun.
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20 years after the word had already been commonly used, no less.
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Yes, half the value of ‘X’ is as an abbreviation for “cross” (and by extension “trans”, and also the Greek letter chi). It’s barely used for spelling actual English words, so without its side hustle in abbreviations like “xtianity”, “xfer”, “xlate” and “Charing X” it would really be on the skids.
Speaking of Charing X, some older signage on the London Underground uses the abbreviations “King’s ☩” and “Charing ☩”, which always irritated me. At one point the dot matrix displays on the (Northern Line?) had even been specially programmed with that Cross of Jerusalem character, which you just know is where some asshole manager from the olden times made a stink because he thought ‘X’ was a vulgar Americanism or something. This is why I refer to King’s Cross as “King’s Plus” in conversation. I’m mocking people who can’t handle the whole X = cross situation.
Perhaps as a compromise we could just agree to call the PS buttons “Byzantine Imperial Halo”, “Halo Vivant”, “Halo of the Holy Trinity” and “Cross of Saint Andrew”.
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