Quote:
Originally Posted by Since1984
Imagine the confusion???? Scorpio, Scarlett, Lockhart.....which ones which!!!!
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Yeah, tons of people out there buying Gamecubes when they mean to buy a Switch.
Happens all the time, just like the One X/Series X issue which, you know, is an actual issue.
I know you fanboy a little hard for the XB, but from a marketing perspective there is good scientific reason why certain naming conventions work and others are confusing. As others have said, this is a weird hill to die on.
TL;DR for the following: Sony and Nintendo are smart, Microsoft is dumb, and unclear marketing negatively impacts the average consumer.
Sony goes with the standard numerical system, like Apple, with certain logical conditional attachments. Playstation 2, 3, 4, 5, Pro for more powerful models, slim for smaller models, etc. Apple does this too, with the numbers and Pro, or Max, or Mini, or Plus. Words that mean something, with the only outlier being "SE." They're consistent, so it works. And in Apple's case, when they make a change (swapping out Plus and introducing both Max and Pro) they do it for good reason.
Nintendo tends towards the unique identifiers for consoles. Switch, Wii, Gamecube, N64, DS, etc. They also play around with iterations and logical conditional attachments that mean something, like 3DS (if you guessed it was 3D, you were right!), Gameboy Color (it's Gameboy, but in color!) etc. Their biggest mistake for a completely new console was Wii U. I'm sure by now you're figuring out why.
Microsoft's issue is that they do neither of these things, and they aren't consistent. You have the Xbox, which they decided was the brand name, and then the Xbox 360. So, naturally, people are going to assume some bigger number comes next. But next was the Xbox One. Again, there's opportunity there to go to "Two" right after and start using a numerical system OR continue using unique identifiers and change the name completely, so why is it an issue? Because of the conditional attachments. With X and S, they established two conditional attachments to the name, neither actually easily understood, but explainable. X is "pro" and S is "lite upgrade." Great. Then the next console comes along, so it's either the Two, or it's a fully new name, and that's what they did. But instead of calling it the "Series," it's the "Series X." So, they established X as a conditional attachment to the name, and in the very next release, included it instead as part of the name. And S stayed as a conditional attachment, but instead of meaning "lite upgrade" now means "lite powered and digital-only." Instead of being a lite upgrade over the "Series" which doesn't exist, it's basically a lite upgrade over the One X, but it's a new system, so it's actually a lite downgrade over the Series X, which is not an upgrade over the Series, it's actually what you would consider the Series, and no upgraded/"Pro" model exists.
So, why is it an issue and why does it confuse people (outside of the completely obvious above) when Sony and Nintendo rarely have the same issue? They don't consistently follow the unique naming structure, they don't consistently follow a numerical naming structure, and they don't consistently use the conditional attachments to the name. None of it means anything, from the numbers to the names to the Xs and Ss. They aren't giving people any indication of the difference, and the releases of the One X and Series X are close enough together and the names are close enough to each other that both are reasonable choices to make, and people see "Xbox" and "X" and go "right, that's the one I'm supposed to get?" because "One" and "Series" don't provide any indication of a difference.
People ask for a Playstation, so 4 and 5 are significant identifiers and the numerical system works. People don't ask for a Nintendo, they ask for a Switch, so the unique naming works. People ask for an Xbox, so their completely asinine naming conventions confuse more of the average consumer than they should. Drop the Xbox name and go fully unique (Scorpio, whatever), or move to a logical and consistent naming structure to attach to the Xbox. Microsoft wants both. It's dumb and confuses people. That's just reality, and anyone with a marketing degree which I would hope at least one person at Microsoft has, should know better.