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The PlayStation controller was originally designed with Circle as the confirm button and Cross as the cancel button in mind. This was flipped around for the West, because of the questionable idea that Westerners associate a cross with a checkbox. In october, articles came out saying all PS5 would use the Western layout, unlike Asian PS4, which still used the original layout.

Now that the PS5 is out in Japan: Is it true that Asian PS5 use the Western layout too? Is there no setting to change it to the original layout (without swapping Circle and Cross themselves)? Are there games that ignore this and still use the original layout?

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    I didn’t even know about this, and it seems weird that O could ever be confirm, weird. Also games wouldn’t pick for themselves because I assume the way it reads input is like: “O was pressed” not “Right-most shape was pressed”. The label printed on the remote would be different, but the software detecting stuff would still identify each button uniquely, which would mean that if it was different then, say O was button 9, it would know button 9 was pressed, no matter where button 9 would be on the remote and whether it is labeled X or O. That is what makes sense and how other systems read inputs
    – Penguin
    Nov 16, 2020 at 5:18
  • "PS5" is plural too.
    – Wrigglenite
    Nov 16, 2020 at 13:35
  • X can be a check to confirm, but is also an X to cancel. And if I can remember right, X is used as a cancel.
    – Fredy31 ♦
    Nov 16, 2020 at 15:28

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According to this article:

Sony is swapping the ‘X’ and circle buttons on the Japanese PlayStation 5 console, shifting towards the West’s use of the ‘X’ button to confirm actions and a circle to cancel.

The original source for this article was from Famitsu (translated to English):

As I learned from this interview, the so-called decision button was not 〇, but × was the default setting. According to the SIE public relations, this is globally unified including the Asian region including Japan, solving the problem that the operation is different between the game of × decision and the system menu of ○ decision, and the occurrence of erroneous input etc. It is said that there is an intention to prevent it.

Multiple sources, including this source state that for PS5 games, the traditional layout for Japanese users will remain the same, thus the circle and X options are only swapped in regards to the PS5 hardware:

Perhaps even more confusingly, the Japanese versions of PS5 games will still use the previous definitions of X and Circle, separate and contradictory to the PS5 hardware itself.

So, it seems that when dealing with menus specific to PS5 hardware, X and circle are swapped (X to confirm, circle to cancel), but in games, they are what Japan has been using for decades (X to cancel, circle to confirm).

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