X to Close – The origins of the use of [x] in UI design. (2014)
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Interestingly, ╳ is no/◯ is yes only on Playstation games released in Japan. For games released everywhere else in the world, it's reversed (which I always found odd, since I think of X as a pretty universal symbol for "no"). Previous HN discussion speculating on reasons for the switch here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171430
It associates with zero == false == no. I suspect this is why Sony swapped the meanings.
The meaning of an X symbol isn’t universal even in Europe, but it’s often used to mark a point of interest or active selection (as in ticking boxes, or “X marks the spot”).
I hate that the switch does this.
But it means sense if everyone in Japan is used to that behaviour because of the swapping of X and O on Playstation.
Controllers typically used sets of A-B(-C) X-Y(-Z) face buttons, A/B intuitively meaning ok/back however they were laid out, usually in straight or angled rows assigned left-to-right (e.g. Sega) or right-to-left (e.g. Nintendo). The angled layouts are the modern Xbox and Nintendo layouts (which Nintendo used since forever and Xbox I guess inherited from their Windows CE involvement with Sega).
But Sony came up with the symbols instead, so Japanese devs followed the maru/batsu metaphor with circle/X, whereas early western games used X/triangle until they switched to X/circle, and those became official regional layouts until the PS5 switched Japan to X/circle.
The labels exist to help the game teach its control scheme, not to make players memorise the layout itself. But of course, games without consistent game mechanics don't have any control scheme to teach.
There are some games I've played on the Switch that use B=confirm, I think usually so that button layout is the same across consoles.
Was that the case when the PlayStation initially released?
the on-off-merged-in-one-pushbutton 0 with a 1 at 12 oclock (in the circle of the 0) came later, I assume out of Europe (Asia?), because suddenly all at once everything had them, mid 90s I think. That was also the beginning of globalization (meaning, identical products sold everywhere) and also "on/off are advisories, not switches", which was probably all just coincidental timing.
(I don't think the 0/1 toggle computer power switch labelling somehow had more influence over Europeans or Asians than it did over Americans, but I dunno, engineers are pretty universal)
I was really struggling to figure out what symbol you were talking about and I couldn't come up with anything. Looked it up and __you mean the power_ icon! I never considered it was made up of the 1 and 0 used for on/off states.
X is commonly used for crossing things out, and marking things wrong
Now, I never played a lot of Playstation. But maybe my short amount of time playing had already contrived muscle memory for my thumb to hover over 'X' instead of 'O', and I'm swapping the cause of the natural feel.
It would be interesting then, if Japanese games all use the 'O' as the yes/confirm/next style button in games, do Japanese gamers have a 'naturally' different thumb resting-hover position when picking up a Playstation controller?
If not, I'm surprised Sony did not have the X and O reversed on the earliest design of the controller.
It reminds me of the Yes/No vs. No/Yes debate in the OS UI world. In windows we get Yes on the left and No on the right, which exactly the same as with the PS controller.
In Linux this is often reversed and only when you make the change you notice how much you get used to it being one way or the other.
I wonder what the order is in Japanese Windows and if it affects Japanese PS controller users at all.
The biggest confusion I notice is scroll-to-zoom, where you have a 50% chance of using up to zoom in down to zoom out and 50% of the other way. I haven't found a good way to guess which applications will do which (on my CAD workstation I have one of two programs set to inverted scroll, and I won't remember which one it is unless I run into a new installation).
If I switch between Nintendo and US-Playstation there's usually a short adjustment period where I need to learn to put my right thumb back into the correct "home" position. Both feel comfortable and adjusting to the new normal is pretty fast.
Not anymore as of PS5 though, not sure why they chose to change it.
It's probably just due to consistency with the Xbox.
As others have pointed out, the "flipped" version eventually dominated to the extent that they changed it even in Japan, though maybe you can blame Sony's increasingly Western focus there.
Switching it for the West never really made any sense and has only ever led to more confusion than if they hadn't done it at all.
The reactions from Japanese gamers were quite humorous.
“At last they’re making it uniform? Japan has been defeated.”
“Yep, trash.”
“Sony traitors.”
“This is a bullshit console.”
“This means that the circle on the Japanese flag is now ‘cancel.’”
https://kotaku.com/sony-is-changing-the-confirm-and-cancel-b...
Interestingly, I later became a games developer and discovered that on the developer units you can change the O/X to confirm/cancel mapping in order to be able to test for correct behaviour in both locales, but as a frustrated player who was still getting them mixed up, I never understood why that option wasn't just available on the retail consoles as well.
> which I always found odd, since I think of X as a pretty universal symbol for "no"
As for this, I think in the UK and maybe most of the English speaking world (and maybe also most other countries), people are conditioned to using an x to mark their selection when confronted with several choices, or a tick mark for true if there's only one choice (sometimes people tick checkboxes, but this usually extends past the edge of the box and can easily get messy) but is seems culturally in Japan they've always used the circle instead.
Similarly, using O for off has been a convention on power switches for a long time (again, at least in the UK), so it also makes sense as a cancel button.
Conversely, there's also use good precedent for X to indicate wrong in the UK, but I think it's only really when there's a choice between cross and tick.
I guess for the original PlayStation, it was always intended that O was confirm and X was cancel, and only got changed for non-Asia when the international Sony offices complained about it being culturally confusing.
Not quite true. In Vim, :x means ‘save and close buffer’, and is a synonym for :wq. (Not sure if this was present in earlier Vi or not, but I believe it was.)
Which? The website linked to is hardly comprehensive [1]. There's literally tonnes of X window managers pre-1993 [2].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160516213015/http://whiteandno...
[2] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guide_to_X11/Window_Managers
> When I see an "X" in the corner of an image I see on screen, it feels as though clicking on it will make it go away. Now, clicking on an "X" is supposed to feel like a way to take me onto The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. But my instinct is to click when something is annoying me, not to click when I want more.
Before that I assume “x” was a metaphor for crossing out the page of text or paragraph marking it invalid. That is probably not as universal.
Windows 3 was using “x” in checkboxes as well, I wonder if switching to checkmarks is connected to putting “x” on the “close window” button.
It sounds wild that the X == denial originates from Japan.
My personal conjecture is that the Close action had the purpose to kill off your graphical work at that point.
So death for that portion…
Death often being depicted in cartoons (inc. black and white) with an X over both eyelids
The “x” during hover was apparently added in MacOS X.
The File menu has Close.