Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

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It's really not that bad. Nintendo's got more confusing SKUs in some of their product lineups than that.

The only thing that was stupid with Microsoft's naming was this latest generation that they call it Series S and Series X, which is bad for 2 reasons:

- No one knows what to call them as a general term. You can say "this game is for PS5" but for them it's like "this game is for Xbox Series"? I guess they just want you to call it "Xbox" cause that's all it says at the top of the game cases now.

- They just came from selling the One S and One X, which was a mid-lifespan hardware update, the S being a smaller formfactor Xbox One and the X being a spec bump. Confusing that they continue to sell and S and an X but it's a whole new console.

They should have already learned from Nintendo who made this mistake several times with the 3DS (which many didn't realize was an entirely new but backwards compatible system from the DS), new 3DS (yes that was an actual system's name that had exclusive games that couldn't be played on the normal 3DS), and Wii U (which everyone thought was a tablet controller for the Wii)

As someone without an Xbox, nor friends that play Xbox, Xbox's naming is terrible and confusing. It used to not bother me when I followed Xbox news and was "in the know", but now it's irritating.

Xbox -> Xbox 360 -> Xbox One -> Xbox Series (?). I still don't know whether S or X is the "good one". Compare it to Playstation: PS1 -> PS2 -> PS3 -> PS4 -> PS5. The upgraded line is "PS $number Pro".

Someone can tell me they have a PS5 Pro, and I know what they mean. They could tell me they want a PS6 and I know what they mean, even if the PS6 hasn't even been announced yet.

Someone tells me they have an Xbox One X and my eyes glaze over. Prior to now, that means nothing to me. I don't know when the Xbox One came out, I don't know if it's their newest line, I don't know if X is the Pro or if it's the budget. The S and X may not even indicate pro and budget, but I think they do.

At least Nintendo's names are kind of cute. It's still silly, but at least Wii or Switch is kind of endearing. Xbox Series X sounds like they let an edgy teenager name it; having X on both ends reminds me of the days of xX420ShadowRanger69Xx usernames. Also doesn't make a clean acronym; XSX is both hard to say and makes me think more of SXSW than Xbox.

> At least Nintendo's names are kind of cute. It's still silly, but at least Wii or Switch is kind of endearing.

Those were not the ones I called out as bad. Those are good because when they came out they were unique and memorable.

Let me list out the following consoles:

Nintendo DS

Nintendo DS lite

Nintendo DSi

Nintendo DSi XL

Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo 3DS XL

Nintendo 2DS

New Nintendo 3DS

New Nintendo 3DS XL

New Nintendo 2DS XL

There's technically only 2 generations of Nintendo consoles in there, but the DSi had some exclusive physical games that were sold in store, and couldn't be played on the DS. And the new 3DS had some games that couldn't be played on the original 3DS.

Some of those are pretty bad. "New Nintendo 3DS" particularly so. Man, I didn't realize how much of the DS line I missed.

Some of them I don't mind too much. The XL and Lite SKUs make sense to me, presuming they mean what they appear to.

3DS makes intuitive sense to me, it's clever.

There's a separate conversation to be had about whether it's too many SKUs (probably) but name-wise I only really hate "New Nintendo" and DSi. DSi only because it's far less intuitive than the others.

I think the Xbox naming is all because the PlayStation came out before the Xbox and if Microsoft would have used a similar version-incrementing naming convention they would have always been one version behind Sony. Thus the second generation of the Xbox being the 360, which competed with the PS3: the 360 had a “3” in its name, so to a consumer’s mind they were comparable.

I agree that that's why they didn't do a simple XBox 2, but I have never in the past 20 years had the thought that 360 starts with 3, so it's the competitor to the PS3. But even with that reasonable limitation guiding their decision, going from OG to "360", "One", and then "Series" is a pretty huge failing to establish a consistent branding. And "Series" in general doesn't give a natural sounding way to refer to this generation as a whole.

Ah, that makes some degree of sense. They could have done degrees of rotation like skateboard tricks, but then I guess the Xbox One would have been Xbox 720 which sounds like it's a 720p console.

> S and X

The S naming has been consistent since the 360: it's the small one.

It's not a stretch of anyone's imagination that the other one is the bigger one (I mean that's t-shirt sizing), nor that it exists in the same generation as the S and therefore is not bigger just for the sake of taking more real estate under the TV.

The one they nailed though is Xbox One X, which is recursive.

I OP just finished telling you that is _is_ a stretch to their imagination. Thats great that you understand it though.

They need a model E, like Tesla

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