Letters. Definitely.
With time, that
Y X B A would become
ingrained into your soul. You could
feel it there, you could understand it. It made sense; you had
progression. You moved up in the alphabet from
right to
left. High letters on top, low on bottom. The
playstation controller symbols, on the other hand...
Oh god. I don't even know what they are.
Go into a LAN Party, anywhere, give each person over 15 a piece of paper with an outline of a Super Nintendo controller and ask them to label each button with its letter. Then ask them to do the same to a PSX controller. I almost guarantee that everyone will get the Super Nintendo one but not the PSX one.
Y X B A you felt; The Sega Genesis A B C you felt. The PSX symbols, you think, look down at the controller, think again, press. I don't think i'm alone in this; i've watched people playing PSX games, i've asked people. But i know no matter how long I play Playstation games, when i press those buttons my fingers are still feeling letters, not symbols. I learn the controls to a game mechanically, but what i'm learning is still the Y X B A on the nintendo controllers. (Thank the gods that Sony put their X where nintendo's X was, or i'd be completely lost.) Part of this may be people's tendencies to refuse to lose their old habits, but in this case i think it goes deeper.
People learn and think differently. Some are visual; some are auditory, some are tactile blah blah blah. Purely visual people could probably do the symbols just fine. I am not one of them. I for one, even if i could somehow pull off the seemingly impossible task of memorizing which shape goes where, still would not be as efficient because internally, every single time on screen something in FF9 said "Press Δ!" my brain would have to see the triangle, interpret shape:triangle, map to the thought "triangle" underneath my fingers, process triangle:shape back again, and press the button. With "Press X" there's just Letter X on screen, Letter X under fingers, press. At least, for me. (I believe very single speech action i did when i rented (and beat) the excellent Abe's Odysee took at least two tries.) There's just a bunch of steps in there with symbols that aren't with letters because (since reading is so deeply ingrained?) a picture of an X is simultaneous with the thought of an X.. and even though this makes a fraction of a split second's difference, that can be-- in a console game-- the difference between life and death.
I assume this kind of reaction is common, or that at least if this difficulty is because there's something wrong with me then the something wrong with me is just Asberger's Syndrome or something else which is very very common among the playstation's target market.
(Also see my writeup under Super Nintendo Controller for a small relevant note on craftsmanship.)
I have no clue what Sony was thinking, on any of this. My first guess would be that that some kind of Patent held by Nintendo prevented them from copying Nintendo's very sensible ideas. My other guess would be that none of this is actually a problem and i'm just on crack.
We may never know.
P.S.: as far as symbols for album names go, see also
Led Zeppelin IV