American-made PlayStation games were using X for confirm and O for cancel long before the Xbox came out. It’s probably partially because X is blue and O is red; we don’t have cultural context for the symbols, but we do have cultural context for the colors.
Also fascinating is that there was this window of games that tried using various “ok” buttons. Like, I think it was originally the Start button, then some games tried even Triangle or even Square. Conventions are weird.
I just appreciate that Sony put a lot of effort into trying to make their buttons memorable and intuitive. The green Triangle points up, the cancel blue Square is down, the pink Square is left (like where you’d hold a shield), and the red ok/yes Circle is on the right. They made the convention, and haven’t fucked with it at all.
I also appreciate their buttons being labeled and numbered. Like L1 and L2, vs msft’s… Shoulder? Bumper? R1? Trigger? I alternate between shoulder and bumper, but they could have called it Frank and it would have been better. Imagine if they had weirdly given each button proper names.
American-made PlayStation games were using X for confirm and O for cancel long before the Xbox came out. It’s probably partially because X is blue and O is red; we don’t have cultural context for the symbols, but we do have cultural context for the colors.
I see the symbols as like checkboxes or matrices. The ‘X’ has been filled in as yes, the O has been left empty
Also fascinating is that there was this window of games that tried using various “ok” buttons. Like, I think it was originally the Start button, then some games tried even Triangle or even Square. Conventions are weird.
I just appreciate that Sony put a lot of effort into trying to make their buttons memorable and intuitive. The green Triangle points up, the cancel blue Square is down, the pink Square is left (like where you’d hold a shield), and the red ok/yes Circle is on the right. They made the convention, and haven’t fucked with it at all.
I also appreciate their buttons being labeled and numbered. Like L1 and L2, vs msft’s… Shoulder? Bumper? R1? Trigger? I alternate between shoulder and bumper, but they could have called it Frank and it would have been better. Imagine if they had weirdly given each button proper names.