The Shapes On PS Buttons

[3DO Experience]

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.

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.

[Vance]

It has the added bonus of a color scheme that the brain can store away. The Dreamcast had colored buttons based on that design... it was the only good thing about that stupid controller... but the human mind stores alphabets and numbers differently... you can still memorize it, but rhebus patterns work on a more instinctive level.

[Lemmi]

and after i played final fantasy on the PS for about 5 weeks i still had to look at that F'ed up controller

ABC is alot easier