Sony PlayStation: Why you won’t see ABXY buttons in game controllers…

Sony PS controller

Most gamepads, from Nintendo to Xbox, follow a familiar pattern: face buttons marked A, B, X, and Y. The tradition began with early consoles like the NES, which had A and B buttons, and continued with the Super NES adding X and Y. While there is no official explanation for these choices, the letters make intuitive sense in English: we talk about moving from point A to B or choosing X over Y. Microsoft and other console makers adopted the same system. PlayStation, however, took a different path, using symbols instead of letters on its face buttons.

PlayStation controllers feature X, circle, square, and triangle, a design that has endured across three decades, from the original PlayStation to the DualSense and DualSense Edge. The choice was deliberate, and the story behind it comes from original PlayStation designer Taiyo Goto.

In a 2010 interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu, later preserved via the Internet Archive, Goto explained that he had freedom to design the PlayStation controller. He wanted buttons that were both distinct and easy to remember. “We went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward,” Goto said.

Each symbol was chosen with purpose. The triangle represents viewpoint or direction, the square represents menus or documents, and the circle and X correspond to yes and no decisions. Goto also assigned colours: green for triangle, pink for square, red for circle, and blue for X. Despite some initial confusion over the colours, Goto insisted on his choices.

While Goto’s design is now iconic, it initially faced resistance from Sony management, who wanted a controller more like the flat Super Nintendo gamepad. Goto’s design, including ergonomic handles and symbolic buttons, won approval thanks to support from then-president Norio Ohga. Ohga, a pilot, appreciated the tactile feel reminiscent of a control stick. Tensions in the boardroom reportedly reached a near-violent level, but Ohga’s backing allowed Goto to keep his design intact.

“Getting to use such simple symbols in a design is an extremely rare opportunity, and it was really a stroke of luck to me,” Goto said. Today, the triangle, circle, X, and square remain central to PlayStation’s identity, distinguishing its controllers from the lettered layouts of other consoles.