Playstation U.K. Says You’ve Been Calling the ‘X’ Button by the Wrong Name

If you’re a Playstation gamer, owner, friend of an owner, or have ever just seen their damn controller, it’s likely you’ve referred to the southernmost non-D-pad button as the X button. To reinforce why, look no further than that picture above.

However, according to the official Playstation U.K. Twitter account, you (and me…and everyone I’ve ever known) is a fool for having done this because the correct term for the blue icon is actually the “cross” button. Though it’s also worth noting that British people also throw random u’s in their words and have their own special way of pronouncing the letters Z and H, so consider it might just be something they do over there. In either event, as long as the person you’re screaming at in the midst of a Madden game or deathmatch or whatever understands what it is, it’s unlikely to radically alter your life. 

While this is unlikely to change the vocabulary of any gamers at this point, one person popped up in the mentions to attempt to cure our ignorance with an exceptionally nerdy tweet.

“Crosses have the same distance between each stick. Crosses form a square,” they explained. “Exes don’t have the same distance between each stick. Exes form a rectangle. Basic geometry.”

Another user pointed out that the correct term may indeed be “fork,” based upon the text that appears to be printed on a controller after it’s had its shell pried off. You can fact check this yourself, though it’s much less expensive to just take their word for it.

While this all originally started with a tweet from Playstation U.K., the console’s main account got in on the controversy no one’s talking about by providing a poll asking people what exactly they call the button. As of the typing of this sentence “cross” is polling third, way behind “X” and also behind a joke response.

Now seems like the perfect opportunity to also point out that the PS5 devkit, or maybe even an early model of the actual PS5, is rumored to have dropped. So if ever there was an appropriate moment to clarify this, now may be as good a time as the mid-’90s 2000 2006 2013 any.