I still can’t believe that is Rob Schnider’s kid. Finally, he made something good…
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I think this has something to do with the Super Famicom button layout which was kind of the spiritual predecessor to the first PlayStation.
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This goes back to when PlayStation was a super Nintendo add-on.
ABXY on a snes controller is equivalent to 1234, so the PlayStation copied that when it became a standalone product with shapes with incrementing numbers of sides, and kept the Nintendo’s default button meanings.
Later when PlayStation came West, there was a decision to differentiate more from Nintendo, so they swapped the meanings of circle and square.
Then you get to bring in Microsoft and Sega for even more button position and naming confusion.
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That is weird. The one thing I’ve noticed is that the position of the button is much more important to me than the label, as I rarely ever look at the label. I’ll often tell people to hit OK or Back, never X or Circle.
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Its annoying when you play one game for a long time, and then switch to something else and suddenly some of the peripheral controls are different.
Presumably “tyre.”
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They just don’t want anyone associating (even remotely) their product with Xbox.
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The post is from Sony UK. In UK that shape is typically called a ‘cross’ (Noughts and Crosses, etc.). Sony is a Japanese company, and sometimes that character is pronounced as ‘cross’ in the title of cross-over games, with a meaning analogous to ‘versus’ (Tekken X Street Fighter == “Tekken Cross Street Fighter”).
This is a totally expected and understandable thing for Sony UK to say. I wouldn’t say they’re ‘insisiting’ on anything? If their posts spell color as colour, does that mean they’re “insisting” upon it, or just, you know speaking in the idiom they’re entitled to, regardless of how thin-skinned Americans are at anything different?
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The only reason that people think “t” when they think “cross” is because of (incorrect) Christian cultural beliefs.
Presuming the events of the Bible are true, Jesus would likely have been killed on an X-shaped cross. Also, in Greek, his name begins with an “X” (His Divine Foreshadowing). This combination lead to the use of “X” as an abbreviation for the word “Christ”, leading to Xmas and Xian. (Anyone who claims “Xmas takes the Christ out of Christmas” is either ignorant or purposefully lying to you; so anything else they say may be disregarded as equally untrue.)
For most people in the world, X would be “cross” and this makes sense. It’s only the western Christian word override for “cross” as a “t” that makes it look weird for some people.
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Philippians 2:8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on an ‘X’.
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based on the popularity of another recent post, i would assume that more in the boingboing community would understand that the correct names of the buttons are, “kick,” “punch,” “chop,” “block.” it least that’s what a wise onion master taught me.
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(I assume you mean circle and cross.)
Do you have a source for this? Because I’ve heard before the “it matches the SNES!” as an explanation for why it’s like that in Japan, but I’ve never seen any evidence that the change in the West was in order to step further away from Nintendo.
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Does this answer it (enough*)?
*serious question, because I am not sure 
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Rodger delta-oh-x-box, we have you on approach at 1500. You are cleared for runway 38.
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No. It just reiterates the “In Japan a circle has a positive meaning!” factoid, and the closest it gets to explaining the change is a long stretch to “Maybe you can interpret a circle as being like a zero on a test!”
But thanks for finding it, anyway. <3
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Does “kings cross” refer to an abbreviation of “Kings crossing” or is it like “the Christian cross of the King”. If it’s the former it definitely should be an X. If the later maybe the upright cross symbol is better??
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What is this third definition left hook you’re throwing me!?
Although reading that closer it sounds like it refers to a Christian cross, but that sometimes they put another sort of structure other than a cross but called it that anyway. Very confusing. But sounds like in that case the upright cross would be a more appropriate symbol…
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It’s old knowledge. Old thing I remember reading. It’s trivia at this point. Other notes is that the button layouts of early prototype snes controllers included:
D
B C
A
and
Y
B X
A
There’s a lot of interesting trivia about that layout. In fact if you look at the clock signal for the SNES controller it includes the original NES clock signal and maps A & B to what is now B & Y.
A little googling finds a this page with is interesting too:
