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Comment by petepete | Hacker News Reader

I just had to look up the difference between the series X and S. It wasn't obvious to me. It's not even obvious which is the more powerful model, there's no mention anywhere of what X and S stand for. Is 'S' Small or Super? And I guess the 'X' is for eXperience.

Compare that to PlayStation 4/PlayStation 4 Pro/PlayStation 5 (and yeah, I'm not going to argue that 'pro' isn't a stupid designation for a slightly-more-powerful-than-before console), but it's at least obvious where they sit in the lineup.

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AFAIK it’s X, S, Series X, Series S.

AFAIK, S is “no physical media”

AFAIK, “series” means “fancy”

I’ve only ever purchased XBox consoles and currently rock an XBox One.

Lemme fix your marketing, XBox: call the “no drive” ones “cloud” or “online” or “vapor” or whatever.

Call your next one 9006 so it is simultaneously “over 9000”, and puts you back in the semver race with PlayStation. /s

And not to be confused with the previous generation Xbox One X.

You didn't play your professional games on your PlayStation Pro? Office Simulator 2017, Mortgage Agreement 8, Car Repayments Xtreme?

I do not believe that you tried to figure out which was more powerful and it was not immediately obvious. MS even made a page comparing them and highlights the differences: one can do 12 teraflops the other 4. One does 4k the other only 1440p.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/consoles/compare

Yes the names are not as easy to compare as PS5 vs PS4, but upon cursory investigation it's blatantly obvious that the X is more powerful than the S.

> upon cursory investigation it's blatantly obvious that the X is more powerful than the S.

The part I emphasize is exactly the argument of the person you're responding.

>MS even made a page comparing them

You wouldn't google Playstation 4 and 5 to find out which is which. I have no idea why Microsoft would do this. Try sending your mother out to buy one. Would she know which one to buy and understand the difference?

The person you’re responding to’s point is that you know that a PS5 is better than a PS4 without cursory investigation because you know 5 > 4. When you’re dealing with mass market consumers, there are many that won’t perform cursory investigations of products. Busy parents, technologically illiterate grand parents, kids with limited internet access, etc.

The commenter said they didn't know the difference based on the name AND once they did:

"it's not even obvious which is the more powerful model, there's no mention anywhere of what X and S stand for."

I believe the point they were trying to make is that the naming is confusing for consumers. Even if you’re aware of the difference, the naming is still confusing. If someone with knowledge of the product can’t figure out the naming, then how can anyone else?

The point is, it's not _obvious_. You need to get three pages deep on xbox.com to see the specs side by side.

At a glance the difference between the X and the S could be like the PS4 vs PS4 Slim, or the PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition.

Right, blame the user for not doing sufficient research to understand which letter is better. /s

Having to open a comparison page means it's not immediately obvious. Picture an office worker who has one December evening to run through the mall, buy and wrap gifts for the whole family. Opening his phone, googling the differences between X and S, and also between Xbox series X and Xbox one X? He'll just take Playstation 5 instead.

It really isn't obvious at all. In the past, the slimmer model tends to come out after a few years, maybe with some minor upgrades. Having two released at the same time within the same generation is just... stupid.

But people purchasing an xbox will see the price difference between the models and immediately understand what they should buy.

X > S

Seems pretty intuitive..

So, this¹ is what I should buy?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One#Xbox_One_X

You could. Or you could buy the Series X.

It should be pretty obvious that Series > One > 360.

I think it’s absolutely baffling that somebody might find such a perfectly logical and reasonable naming system confusing.

I agree that x > s.

But why does Series > One?

Are you pulling his leg calling this intuative and obvious?

What is obvious about series being better than 360? why would someone think that if they were just presented with those names and nothing else?

Why would someone think x is better than s without doing any research?

Yes the user is being sarcastic.

Yea, I couldn’t tell. It felt like it, but the way he kept responding implied that maybe he really did think it was simple for some reason I wasn’t getting.

Xbox Series S > Xbox One X

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