The Shapes On PS Buttons
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2010 12:25 am
This is pretty interesting. I’ve always thought that the shapes on the Playstation controllers were chosen just to be distinctive, and so they didn’t have to use a numbered or lettered face button scheme like Nintendo’s. As it turns out, they were picked for good reason.
Sony’s Teiyu Goto wrote:Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a color. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one’s head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. People thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that’s what I wanted.