Sony misspells "Select" on PS3 display controller

by Blake Snow { Jun 14th 2006 at 6:35PM }

A Gawker Kotaku reader found a PS3 controller on display at the Ginza showroom that has "Select" misspelled as "Serect." That's all we're going to say. Oh, and Engrish just got a new entry. Oh, and Donna Chang is not Asian, so "that changes everything!"

[Thanks Jdoki; via Geekologie]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

sev4 pri1 @ Jun 14th 2006 6:40PM

prease, rike dat isn't a photoshop!

avery @ Jun 14th 2006 6:47PM

I would have to say photoshop as well.

Donald @ Jun 14th 2006 6:47PM

Three simple letters:

ROR

PadrinoJose @ Jun 14th 2006 6:48PM

OMG... i got a new t-shirt idea... S ERECT - START

Wahaha ha

they copied that from wii

ji ji...

saludos

Iwata Miyamoto @ Jun 14th 2006 6:49PM

Yeah I'm gonna say Photoshop too, since they have been making controllers with the correct select word for 10 years now.

teh_pwnerer @ Jun 14th 2006 6:53PM

lol nice to bring Donna Changstein up

Will @ Jun 14th 2006 6:56PM

I think its photoshopped too, while its possible that they made a typo while doing the black one the silver one is fine so I highly doubt that they messed up the black one. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/PS3_controllers_at_CES_2006.jpg

Einhanderkiller @ Jun 14th 2006 7:02PM

It's a Photoshop.

Open up the image file in Notepad and it'll say "Adobe" in the first line.

mercuryswitch @ Jun 14th 2006 7:07PM

7. Einhanderkiller:
Regardless of whether the image was doctored or not, I would not be surprised that there is an Adobe tag on the image. I would actually be surprised if there isn't one on the image. You think they wouldn't at least pass it through Photoshop to resize/crop, or otherwise modify the image so that it looks good on the site? Simply put, the tag doesn't mean anything.

Eric @ Jun 14th 2006 7:07PM

How the hell can they be serious?

How many millions of PS1 and PS2 controllers have they manufatured with the correct SELECT spelling??

Goes to show you how much Sony is sliding.

UncleGuito @ Jun 14th 2006 7:08PM

This has been confirmed a photoshop, someone posted the original.

The contrast on the letter R is different

vidGuy @ Jun 14th 2006 7:10PM

Search google images for the original. That proves it's a fake, and a pretty goofy idea at that... but hey, it made Joystiq.

Einhanderkiller @ Jun 14th 2006 7:11PM

mercuryswitch, while you are correct, I seriously doubt Sony wouldn't have caught this error before they put it up for display.

Nick Dube @ Jun 14th 2006 7:14PM

Just so you guys know, in japanese there is no sound for the letter "l" and "r" is used in its place. yeah i know this and you should too - go to school

but in all seriousness folks, photoshopped or not the pronounciation in japan of select is "serect(o)" the o is added because every english world when translated into katakan (the alphabet used for foreign words in japan) has to follow up every consenant (spelling) with a vowel

joseph @ Jun 14th 2006 7:15PM

ROFLMFAO!!

w00t!

i LOVE seinfeld!

Alkaiser @ Jun 14th 2006 7:16PM

While that may be a Photoshop job, at E3, Bandai was showing off a Gundam game on the PS3.

On the display card for the controls it said "L1: Rock On".

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jameswong/148588088/

It also had "Triangle: Valcan Guns" but that's not as funny.

Pixelbox @ Jun 14th 2006 7:18PM

Everyone uses Photoshop to get their jpegs web-ready, so having "Adobe" in the file doesn't automatically mean it's fake. But it seems pretty unlikely that they'd mispell a word they've been using for so long.

Then again, you'd really be amazed by what people over here mispell.

Pixelbox @ Jun 14th 2006 7:24PM

okay, after looking at the pictures, it's pretty clear that it's not a photoshop fake. Wow.

Rawnblade @ Jun 14th 2006 7:34PM

"3. Three simple letters:

ROR"

I just spewed diet coke all over my monitor.

Nick Dube @ Jun 14th 2006 7:34PM

again just to restate this fact because no one seems to care - In japan there is NO L sound or letter or anything, like there is
la
li
lu
le
lo
but it is generally pronounced R

crap now i am thinking there is no R but the L is prounc...no no it is still pronounced that way. soo weird i completly forget my japanese..ah crap

Marc @ Jun 14th 2006 7:49PM

I want to laugh, but Sony wants an alliance with Nintendo. I'm not sure what to believe anymore.

Alex Keen @ Jun 14th 2006 8:04PM

Lamest attempt at humor... yet.

Yuki~Summer Ver.~ @ Jun 14th 2006 8:10PM

As I pointed out over at Destructiod, we've got a lot more to worry about than that simple misspelling:

http://www.engrish.com/recent_detail.php?imagename=sony-terror.jpg&category=Signs/Posters&date=2006-05-15

Remember this picture when you're handing Sony your $600!

Hurmun @ Jun 14th 2006 8:26PM

Haha, that Seinfeld reference sure came out of left field.

JW @ Jun 14th 2006 8:34PM

For the people saying the original is on the web, the one with the correct "select" spelling is actually the photoshop. It spawned from neogaf.

So yeah, the "serect" is NOT a photoshop job.

Jeb @ Jun 14th 2006 8:49PM

I believe this is NOT Photoshop. The Asians are always doing things backwards or wrong. Proof in point, it's the 2 Asian companies who are using the gimmicky, lame motion sensor technology. Go X-Box!

Yuki~Summer Ver.~ @ Jun 14th 2006 8:50PM

Jeb fails.

datadyne 11 @ Jun 14th 2006 8:55PM

I was informed by a factory worker in Osaka that evidently during the stamping process, there had been a minor earth tremor [which occurs quite frequently in Japan] and the stamping carriage shifted somewhat thereby substituting the "r" in place of the "l". It was not noticed by the quality control group after final assembly and the result is what you see in the pic. Kutaragi is supposed to release a [hopefully not long] statement soon to Joystiq. Can't wait for this one!

hinder90 @ Jun 14th 2006 9:02PM

Guys, come on now. This is not even a good photoshop. Zoom in and you can see that blur for the "R" is completely different than from the other letters- so easy to spot!

hinder90 @ Jun 14th 2006 9:21PM

Okay, look at http://www.dingus.net/shite/serect.jpg. I cropped "SERECT" from kotaku and increased %1200 in size. Photoshop applies some smoothing when doing this and it reveals how the fuzziness of the R is completely different than the others revealing it is from a completely different source. I realize this is far form scientific, and I don't make a living spotting forgeries (thankfully) but it didn't take much to spot this as bogus.

Ethan @ Jun 14th 2006 9:29PM

omg omG look I didnt photoshop it at all, I swear;-)
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b360/usopen05/xbox360controller.jpg

R.U.Sirius @ Jun 14th 2006 9:43PM

Ok, I got it.

"Serect".

But what in the hell is...

"Stalt"

...then?!? :D

-R.U.Sirius

Anticrawl @ Jun 14th 2006 9:48PM

This seems plausible, with the rushed controller and all from the legal battles over rumble technology and the extreme hate of the boomerang controller plus the success of Wii's controller. They waited til the last minute to throw one together I can see it happening.

This truely could be an omen of what's to come from an already terrible situation Sony is in.

Anticrawl

Ethan @ Jun 14th 2006 9:54PM

Yep, sony is In a horrible situation. I would hate to lead the market share in the previous and current gen, and have a huge shot at leading the next gen. Would absolutely hate it

Guillermo @ Jun 14th 2006 10:16PM

Anybody remember "VICTOLY"? Remember the game?

Mike @ Jun 14th 2006 10:25PM

Haha thats hilarious....asian people always pronounce L's as R's anyways.

Jeff @ Jun 14th 2006 10:30PM

"again just to restate this fact because no one seems to care - In japan there is NO L sound or letter or anything"

Opposite - you had it right at the end of your post. This is *why* they rarely mistake R's for L's but often mistake L's for R's.

The accepted Hepburn romanization would be "ra ri ru re ro" but it's not pronounced that way. This is why you get Americans saying words like "sayonara" so completely wrong. If they pronounced it "sayonala" (quickly) they'd be a whole lot closer. It's still not exactly the same (the pronunciation of "ra" doesn't really correspond to anything in English) but it's closer. To the Japanese, then, a word like "select" - pronounced using a Japanese pronunciation (serekuto) - would sound pretty much the same as a word like "serect", and it obviously would be romanized from katakana with an "r".

But that's all just an explanation of how this *could* happen, and it's not because of how dumb Sony is. It's a common type of mistake coming from a language that does not even have an alphabet in any way similar to ours (and the romanization rules don't help). But it's still not to say it *did* happen. I think this is a Photoshop job myself. It just doesn't make sense that the silver controller would be fine, the black PS2 controller would be fine but somehow, all of a sudden the black PS3 controller has this misspelling.

MrPolarBare @ Jun 14th 2006 11:03PM

All you need to do now is scratch off that "S" and you get the excitement button.

Raz 4 life @ Jun 14th 2006 11:31PM

Aprir Foors!

Bruce @ Jun 15th 2006 12:25AM

Mike

Not all Asian people do it, it is a thing with Japanese and according to my sister who has studied linguistics, Korean also but doesn ot happen in Chinese.

Sony can't even spell @ Jun 15th 2006 12:33AM

It's not photoshopped, my friend saw it also, and got a pic of it as well. I saw it on his digital camera. I'll ask him to post it somewhere.

teh_pwnerer @ Jun 15th 2006 12:33AM

that's ridicurous

TeddY @ Jun 15th 2006 12:42AM

Just to let you know that Japanese people often mispronounce "L" for "R", because in the Japanese language R is pronounced as L.
example
radio is pronounced ladio.

I have seen this even on many advertisments in japan!

wstrinz @ Jun 15th 2006 1:26AM

hehe sERECT... ERECT! I am so mature...

Anyway, im surprised at your misunderstanding of the internets various people who believe this is authentic; Its generally safe to assume that unless the company confirms it, its quite plausibly photoshoped.

Alex @ Jun 15th 2006 1:38AM

Or, they are trying to tell us something if it's real...

"SERECT" can be rearranged to "SECRET"

oh oh what now sony? what now?

Frank Palazzi @ Jun 15th 2006 1:38AM

I don't care if it's real or not....
I just spent a hour laughing my a** off at engrish.com!!!!! That alone made this worthy of a post !!!!!!

Frank

Markham @ Jun 15th 2006 2:04AM

hinder90, the way you enlarged it doesn't really prove anything, unfortunatly. You left the resampling enabled when you enlarged it, which instead of making a larger yet pixelated image, methodically creates pixels to prevent pixelation. You could go as far as to replace "methodically creates" with "guesses."

Hopefully #40 or another witness can provide graphical proof to end this mystery.