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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.




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