Current Events > Jokes aside, is there a marketing reason for the confusing Xbox names?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Xbox, xbox one, one s, series x series s etc

Is the goal to make people more closely research their products? I feel like making a major recognizable name would make a bigger splash, but I haven't studied marketing

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Coloradough posted...

Is the goal to make people more closely research their products?

No. They named their second console the 360 because focus tests found that random consumers assumed the PS3 was more powerful than the "XBOX 2" because 3 is greater than 2. I sincerely doubt anyone on the Microsoft marketing team thinks anyone researches anything.


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s0nicfan posted...

No. They named their second console the 360 because focus tests found that random consumers assumed the PS3 was more powerful than the "XBOX 2" because 3 is greater than 2. I sincerely doubt anyone on the Microsoft marketing team thinks anyone researches anything.

And because of that, MS has a Xbox naming scheme issue.

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So does that mean the PS4 is four times more powerful than the Xbone?

Most people don't care about the name to begin with. They just say "mom, I want the new xbox for christmas".

specialkid8 posted...

Most people don't care about the name to begin with. They just say "mom, I want the new xbox for christmas".

Then the parents go buy the newest cheapest disc-less console and a bunch of disc games to go with it lol

mobilebloechel posted...

And that's how you get the wrong Xbox

How many are available right now? I don't keep up with them.

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Because they're going to abandon the generation format and release new consoles fairly regularly, so they're not trying to make clear delinations between models anymore.

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I think they deleted it, but IGN put out a tweet describing the backwards compatibility situation using every Xbox name in the series and it was the best, most confusing thing.

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I remember when the One was coming out their reason was because they wanted it to be an All-in-one system. That's why they pushed streaming apps so hard.

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Remember when Nintendo calling their console the "Wii U" resulted in catastrophic failure?

Meanwhile Sony has been killing it in the console market consistently since the first Playstation just by calling it PS2, PS3, PS4, and now PS5.

It's almost like simplicity is best and nobody on the marketing team at Microsoft can get over their own "creative ideas" for new names.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

It's almost like simplicity is best and nobody on the marketing team at Microsoft can get over their own "creative ideas" for new names.

MS has this issue with marketing name & consistency:

Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.x
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.x
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT
etc.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

MS has this issue with marketing name & consistency:

Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.x
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.x
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT
etc.

I think my personal favorite is when they skipped from Windows 8 to Windows 10 for no reason.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

I think my personal favorite is when they skipped from Windows 8 to Windows 10 for no reason.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/191279-why-is-it-called-windows-10-not-windows-9

I think the real reason had to do with Software Developers doing stupid "Windows 9" string checks for Windows 9X series of OS version.

That would've caused a whole lot of issues.

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It all started with the 360. That was called it because they didn't want to be a number behind the Playstation. But this left them with needing to think of new games for future consoles.

So the Xbox One rolls around. That was named because they wanted it to be your one entertainment box. That didn't age well. They added S and X to differentiate the new models of the Xbox One.

I think Xbox Series is their attempt to try and basically have a consistent naming scheme for the future. S and X worked for Xbox One so they stuck with that. S is standard/budget and X is premium. I think the intention is for future consoles to follow phone naming paths. So like Series S2 and X2 or something.

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Xbox literally could have just started going with 460, 560, etc. and been better off.

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I found it



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X Box Series ___ sounds vaguely sci-fi. Like whenever you see androids or something it's like "I am R-66Y, a Series Epsilon Battle Droid Beep Boop a Doop"

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

Xbox literally could have just started going with 460, 560, etc. and been better off.

360 means revolution though. The common name for the Xbox 360 successor was 720 but then that sounds like a TV resolution.

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They should have just ditched the letters and numbers and gone with their project names like Scarlet or Scorpion or whatever the fuck.

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Microsoft is shit.

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