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Comment by spacesword | Hacker News Reader

They mention X and O on the PS controller but usually in games O is for no and X is for yes. Completely opposite of the batsu/maru, incorrent/correct they were discussing.

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It seems like Sony, being a Japanese company, originally intended for O to represent yes, and X to represent no. If you look at a lot of early PlayStation games, or most modern games released in Japan, that convention is apparent. The O and X buttons on the PlayStation controller even match the placement of A and B buttons on Nintendo's controllers, providing a clear analogue between the two.

I'd be curious to know what caused that convention to change in the west.

> I'd be curious to know what caused that convention to change in the west.

The XBox controller has a swapped A/B pair and uses A confirm B cancel.

The XBox controller is a clone of the Dreamcast controller. If you go back even further to the Megadrive, it had 6 buttons (on advanced controllers) with two rows of buttons - xyz and ABC arrayed from left to right.

When the Playstation 1 was released, the two consoles consumers could have been familiar with in the west were Super Nintendo and Sega Megadrive. SNES had the familiar ABXY, but mirrored with AX on the right. It used A for yes and B for no. The Megadrive had the aforementioned ABCxyz and also used A for yes and B for no. Meaning, one console used the bottom button for yes and the one on its right for no (Megadrive), while the other had the bottom button for no and the one on the right for yes (SNES).

So I doubt SONY copied the competition for their decision to swap the yes/no buttons.

>SNES had the familiar ABXY, but mirrored with AX on the right.

Those of us that grew up with Nintendo consoles would say that B on the left of A is the natural order of things ;)

>Meaning, one console used the bottom button for yes and the one on its right for no (Megadrive)

Actually, almost every Megadrive game I've played lets you use both A and C for accept in menus, so you could use whichever orientation you were more comfortable with.

I am just quoting another instance from around that time, besides this is all kind of moot since:

> I doubt SONY copied the competition

IIRC this wasn't decided by SONY, each game used its own variation until a standard was created organically.

Makes sense to me. We have scan sheets and forms with empty bubbles and boxes meaning, "not this one," and we put a check mark, X, or other mark in them to indicate our selection.

In Japanese variants, he is correct. When Sony westernized the playstation controller, the O and X functionality was flipped. Sony is yet to comment on the reasons why.

It might be because of Sega's consoles, which were more popular in the US than they were in Japan, where Nintendo ruled.

The Genesis' button layout was A,B,C arranged in a diagonal from bottom-left to top-right. A was usually 'accept'. The Dreamcast had a diamond with A at the bottom and B to the right.

Nintendo's Famicom buttons read A,B from right-to-left, and that trend continued with the Super Famicom's diamond, which had A to the right and B at te bottom. The N64 had a weird layout, but again B was to the left of A.

Sony probably focus tested the pad in the US and found that players were more used to Sega's layout.

As I said in another comment, almost every Megadrive game I've played lets you use both A and C for accept in menus, so you could use whichever orientation you were more comfortable with. I think anyone who started with Nintendo consoles would instinctually rest their thumb between B and C.

My guess is that Sony thought that X and O wouldn't have as obvious connotations outside of Japan, and figured that people would assume the button closest to the player (X) would be the OK button. In practice, I have found that people with very little exposure to Japanese culture still have the same association with X and O in their heads and get confused when using Playstations ("you press X to accept???"), so I'll curse Sony forever for this stupid regional change.

This is almost certainly a result of intense focus testing, so I don't think it would be a design choice by Sony based on cultural differences so much as an observation of user comfort and expectations.

That's not to say that those expectations weren't due to cultural differences.

I always thought the reason for the switch was down to driving games, where X is a more natural fit for 'accelerate'. Also, X to me is a more 'definitive action' symbol compared to O, make of that what you will.

SNES was also more popular than the Genesis in the west.

AFAIK it came close, but the SNES launched later in the US and the Genesis sold more units. As opposed to Japan where the Genesis didn't really get a foothold.

I thought the popular rumor was this was to help people with Nintendo 64 muscle memory, where the X corresponded (loosely) with where the A button was positioned, and the O corresponded to where the B was positioned.

You're wrong on both counts. B is still to the left of A on N64 controllers, and the PlayStation launched a year before the N64 in America.

My SNES muscle memory prefers the Japanese version. :)

IMO one of the most short-sighted decision made Sony Entertainment EU/US. They had a standard and decided to change it just for the sake of changing it.

In Japan they're sometimes switched. That is to say, I've worked on PS3 games where the US SKU had X=accept, O=back but the Japanese SKU had X=back, O=accept.

[edited]

In Japan the actual convention is X=cancel/back and O=select/validate. Most japanese games follow that, because the Batsu/Maru meaning is obvious in Japanese with these symbols.

Try playing some Japanese games on PS. It's the other way round in Japanese games

On the PS1, Final Fantasy VII was O=yes, X=no, and so were a bunch of the less mainstream JRPGS; also, Metal Gear Solid games were O=yes, X=no at least into the PS2 era.

I actually distinctly remember getting a copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 and being confused why I couldn't start the game. Hitting any button on the splash screen would take you to the menu, and then hitting X from there would take you back to the splash screen. Having primarily played western games up to that point, it didn't even occur to me that another button could be used for 'confirm'.

If you buy a PSP or PS Vita in Japan it will use O as accept and X for cancel in the system menu. Not sure about the home consoles.

not always. western games tend to be bound that way, but Japanese games, espescially RPGs , were not.

example : final fantasy 7 control bindings. http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/buttons.php

Interestingly the positioning of the two matches the common use of the nintendo buttons, A for confirm and B for cancel. The western Playstation games are really the exception to the rule.

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