PSA: You’ve been mislabeling one of the PlayStation controller buttons since forever

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The Sony DualShock controller has gone through some minor changes since its introduction with the PlayStation 1 back in the mid-’90s, but one thing has stayed the same – those iconic “△, O, X, and ▢” buttons.

I mean, you probably know them as Triangle, Circle, Ecks, and Square, right? Well, you’re kinda wrong, as the X isn’t an Ecks at all, it’s a Cross. That’s according to PlayStation’s UK Twitter account, which is about as official as you can get.

You’ve probably been calling the X-button on your PlayStation controller the wrong name

Image: Sony (via Twitter)

PlayStation’s official Twitter put up a poll over the weekend to see how many people knew the true name of the X button. Most of the respondents called it Ecks, or even the more esoteric “+ rotated 45 degrees.” Only 8 percent of the 168,950 votes knew that it was really called Cross. Well done to those 13,000 or so of you.

• The DualShock controller debuted on the PlayStation 1 controller, with no thumbsticks and pressure-sensitive face buttons
• The controller’s shape has become iconic, with hordes of third-party clones copying the design
• It’s almost 25 years old (wow, now I feel old)

The thing is, I can remember gaming magazines in the mid-’90s in the UK calling it Cross, and I can’t have been the only person to see those. Remember magazines? You know, before we got all our gaming news from the internet? Anyway, mystery solved, retconned, whatever. If you call it Ecks now, you’re just wrong (I’ll die on this hill, Joe – Ed.).

What do you think? Do you call the button Ecks or Cross? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.