The PlayStation one is the symbol, not the letter, so that one is a bit different.
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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Purple 'Q' button, Orange 'R' button, Magenta 'S' button, and the Black 'Horseshoe' button.
Emulating Switch I realized how much I love the button prompts. Since the controller could be rotated they just filled in the button to press.
Until you go to your inventory in TOTK and it says “press Y to sort items” and I always press X instead cuz 2 decades of Xbox Controllers.
I have, and always will, maintain that the Xbox controller button layout is the only one that makes any sense to me.
The PlayStation one makes sense to me too but that's probably cause I grew up with a PS2. Now the switch on the other hand, that scheme is a fucking abomination. I actually use a remapped Xbox controller when I play mine.
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To be fair to the copyright troll, the Switch buttons are still in the same relative positions as they were in the SNES.
Every non-Nintendo controller since has just been iteration after iteration of "lemme copy your homework, don't worry I'll change it up a bit."
In fairness, the PS1 Dualshock was damn near perfection. There's a reason everyone has copied it ever since.
Before that, you should have seen the bullshit we had to go through to move the camera around.
Before that, you should have seen the bullshit we had to go through to move the camera around.
I lived through it lol. The DualShock took what worked from the N64 controller (analog and rumble) and added it to the standard PSX controller. Which itself took what worked from the SNES controller (everything) and added another set of shoulder buttons and handles. Later, MS and Nintendo moved the left analog stick above the thumb, and that's basically where we're at so far as standard button layout goes. I'd argue that the Genesis 6-button layout is superior for stuff like fighting games, but for the most part today's standard layout is standard for a reason.
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I've got a (non-brand) playstation controller, but for some reason, Steam thinks it's an XBox controller and puts the XBox button prompts in games instead. I had a (non-brand) XBox controller before, so my muscle memory thankfully knows the buttons and I don't actually have to look.
PlayStation was originally X = B O = A Because in Japan they use a circle to mean the same thing as in English a check mark is used. That is: "yes", or "correct". The cross means "no", or "wrong" in the same context in English and Japanese.
At some point the English language PlayStation games started flipping the meaning of X and O. Not sure why. Maybe to align with Xbox? So eventually Sony changed it in Japan too in order to standardise globally.
Nah. Xbox came out years after the PlayStation. The reason the usage of the ps controller got switched in NA is because they did some studies and people just tried to use ps X-button as the accept button.
Xbox is an abomination amalgamation of everything that came before it: Nintendo, PlayStation, and Sega. Look at those controllers, keeping in mind they came first, and it's painfully obvious what Microsoft was up to. They can't even come up with creative names. Hell, they even bought halo. And in an era of free online services, only Microsoft pushed everything into being paid and micro transactions. A LOT of the enshittification is Microsoft's fault.
Compare to N64, which came before xbox, and know that Microsoft could have made any design they wanted, but didn't.
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There must be a stupid patent about an X button for every position on a game controller.
The only layout I hate is Nintendos. At least with Xbox and PlayStation it’s:
A = X.
B = O.
Y = Triangle
X = Square
With Nintendo, they turn it all slightly and I absolutely hate it. It’s the only one that I have to retrain my brain/coordination for. When I play a Nintendo game through emulation (fuck Nintendo), I notice immediately when the controls didn’t properly migrate from my other games because now all of the sudden A is going back a menu. -.-
To be fair, they used that setup first. And PS originally copied it, but for some reason switched the functions of X and O in the West. In Japan, those symbols O often used for agree/correct/confirm and vice versa for X. It is weird that X became confirm here .
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No they didn’t - it’s the same sequence.
A = circle (1 line )
B = cross (2 lines)
X = triangle (3 lines)
Y = square (4 lines)
Xbox broke with convention.
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If controller manufacturers stuck to their original color scheme it would be way less confusing for most, with the color button prompts on games it used to be much easier to use a different console, but all of the newer controllers are turning colorless which makes switching to another one and getting the hang of it much harder.
I'm pretty sure that Nintendo created this problem.
They used a/b/x/y on the SNES. The Genesis, it's direct competitor, had a/b/c.
Then Xbox copied them and Sony copied them... But each had to have a slight variation because Nintendo being Nintendo, they'd get sued into next week....
I definitely blame Nintendo for this one.
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