To add to this, I have always found the Xbox naming conventions to be confusing, personally. "Xbox One" is the third one, not the original "Xbox" and the two newest models are named almost identically; "Xbox Series X" vs "Xbox Series S".
To make it even more confusing, the Xbox One had the mid-generation updates called Xbox One S (slimmer, a few additional features) and the Xbox One X (more powerful.)
So from oldest to newest it's
- Xbox
- Xbox 360
- Xbox One
- Xbox One S
- Xbox One X
- Xbox Series X and Series S (released simultaneously: S is smaller, X is more powerful)
So for a period of time in stores you might see a One S, a One X, a Series S, and a Series X. If you aren't a gamer, it's a complete mystery which is the newest and most powerful. I'm sure some kids got the wrong console for Christmas, as the One X was at times more expensive than a Series S, despite being an older console that would later not support many games that the Series S supports. This would be even more likely to happen if the Series X was out of stock (so the most expensive Xbox console at the store might be a discontinued model that won't support all the new games.)
In contrast, it's pretty obvious that a PlayStation 5 is going to be better than a PlayStation 4. Yes, a quick search will show which is the newest and most powerful Xbox, but if people have to do research to find out which is your best console and they don't have to do that for your competitor, then you have a confusing naming scheme.
I owned an XBox One something. I believed "Series X" was short-hand for "Xbox One X", as I believed that there were maybe other kinds of "Xbox X". I even bought a game that didn't run on my console because it was for a "series" something, which was not actually what I had. "Series" is often used as an english word to identify a product line. Like "Is that the 'premium' series?"
Sometimes I joke about how confusing the xbox names are. I probably couldn't come up with a more confusing set of names if I tried.
Rumour has it (not sure if this was ever confirmed) that one of the big reasons the second Xbox was called the Xbox 360 was to avoid unfavourable number comparisons with Sony. The Xbox launched vs the PS2, which meant the "Xbox 2" would compete against the PS3. As 3 is bigger than 2, it would make the second Xbox look bad. Hence, Xbox 360. Both have a 3, no number issues. For what it's worth, Robbie Bach (former Chief Xbox Officer) is on the record as saying one of the potential names for the second Xbox was just "Xbox 3" to catch up the PS3.
While officially the meaning of the "Xbox One" name was something about it being an all-in-one entertainment system, I would put money on it being chosen as some kind of subliminal naming scheme as it sounds like "Xbox Won".
Steve Ballmer was hoping people would call it "the one". This was also around the time that SkyDrive had to be renamed to OneDrive due to trademark issues with Sky.
I always judge corporations whenever they resort to "One" as a brand because it signals a total lack of creativity and is likely the result of executives fighting each other and settling on the most mundane and inoffensive concept to represent "it does everything".
I always thought calling it Xbox One was the most bizarre choice in the history of branding and marketing. Given how common it is to retroactively refer to the first item in a series as "One" (Rambo 1, Rocky 1, Playstation 1, etc), it seems intentionally designed to cause confusion.
This is beyond being bizarre. I have never owned an Xbox, and always thought that Xbox One was a re-release of the original Xbox, similar to the Original PlayStation -> PS One. I am hearing it for the first time here that it was a third generation device.
I find that name even more baffling when the reason they apparently branded the previous one Xbox 360 was so that they wouldn't go against the PS3 with an Xbox 2. Somehow it was now fine for an Xbox One to go against a PS4.
Sure, but the problem is S and X sound very similar when spoken, causing more confusion. Try clarifying which one you are talking about in a loud room at a conference.
