How soon they forget.

Interesting article on Kotaku about the origins of the Playstation face-button symbols. This is something that has always bugged me: I didn't find out about the O= Yes, X=No aspect of it until much later, but I've always enjoyed that configuration in Japanese PS games because it feels far more natural to me.

I've always been annoyed that US Playstation games use X as the confirmation button. It's easy to say that Western gamers consider the bottom button the main one now, since the Playstation consoles and Xboxes all used that configuration. But when the PS1 was first released in the `90s, Circle would've been much more natural because it's in the same position as the Super NES' A button, which I was pretty well used to at that point. The DS, whose controls (like all modern non-Wii controllers) are descended from the SNES pad, still uses this configuration. So I sincerely doubt that "gamers are used to this" was the justification used when this decision was made long ago. If I had to guess, I'd guess that Sony wanted to distance themselves from Nintendo despite the fact that the original pre-analog Playstation controller was a Super Nintendo pad with grips and two extra buttons. The Playstation did start its development life as a SNES addon, and hewing too close to the Nintendo model here in the more litigious US might've been a problem.