Hacker News Reader

Comment by whizzter | Hacker News Reader

The pandemic and scalpers really destroyed peoples apetite for the "new thing" when this generation came out, and with that boost missing studios saw little point in going exclusive perpetuating the vicious cycle, it's just in the past few years that there's really been exclusives for this generation that didn't also support older consoles.

And even then, already the PS4/XbOne generation added stratification making it more "PC-like" with the XbOne-X having heftier hardware (not to mention it being PC-like compared to PS1/PS2/PS3/Xbox360), that then continued with the Xbox-series-X and Xbox-series-S.

Consoles aren't specialized hardware for "magic experiences" and everyone knows this, it's just another "device" that happens to be connected to a TV with a controller where people are gatekeeping software availability.

View on HN

Microsoft also didn't do themselves any favor with that naming scheme. In the current generation (I think?), you have: - Xbox X - Xbox S - Xbox Series X - Xbox Series S

Compared to: - PlayStation 5 - PlayStation 5 Pro

or: - Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Switch OLED - Nintendo Switch Lite

Anyone who's literate in English (and knows that OLED means "nicer screen") can immediately rank the PlayStations and Switches into "good, better, best". But with the Xbox, how is anyone supposed to know which one is which? Is the Series version better or worse? Is it a whole new generation, with whatever backwards-compatability implications that a new generation brings? I need a chart and I probably still won't be able to tell you if you ask me in a month.

Slight correction. Last generation was the Xbox One (already a confusing name because some people thought that was referring to the original first Xbox)

A few years into the generation they updated the Xbox One, putting it into a smaller form factor called the Xbox One S, and at the same time released a spec bump model called the Xbox One X. I don't believe any of these are still available for purchase.

The new generation has the smaller/lower-powered Xbox Series S, and the higher-specced Xbox Series X. Leaving the overall generation with seemingly no name, other than "Xbox Series" I guess?

But yes, the names are terrible because S and X both refer to consoles from last gen and current gen.

As an anecdote of how bad the naming is, I own one of these, but couldn’t tell you which one.

You could hardly come up with a worse naming scheme if you tried.

AMD's Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 would like to have a word with you.

This is absolutely correct, I game on Xbox pretty much every day or every other day, I have been with Xbox since 360 or whatever the first one was called. I am still constantly confused by the naming. There also was another revision to the top of the line Xbox series X and the Xbox series X digital edition. I can’t imagine someone looking at the naming scheme pre-release and saying yes, let’s go with that.

I mean, the first one was just called Xbox.

(Tiny rant - and even THAT name sucked. Internally, since it ran on DirectX (already a name that only a mother could love), it was called the DirectX Box. And rather than come up with a real name, they got attached to their lazy idea and shortened it to Xbox. They have made miserable naming choices for this thing since day one. Since BEFORE day one.)

Is Xbox really worse than Play-Station?

It's a pretty good name actually because it's unique, easy to Google, and is never ambiguous in conversation. It's all the suffixes that made a mess of it.

I've had an Xbox I got from a friend and I legitimately don't know which Xbox it is lol

I’m sorry but Nintendo don’t get a free pass in naming. Switch v switch Oled is as clear as Xbox series vs Xbox ones

Nintendo, the company who released the Wii, wiiU, gameboy color, game boy advance, DS, 2DS, 3DS; all of which are similar but vaguely incompatible?

Switch vs Switch OLED is fine, comparatively, because you are forgetting about the worst (non-Microsoft) naming choice of all consoles: the New 3DS.

This lead to situations where you could have a new 3DS that wasn’t a new New 3DS, and didn’t play the games you bought with it. You could also, somehow, have an old New 3DS, a logical impossibility.

Anyone in charge of naming anything that just calls it the “new” thing should be fired for not taking their job seriously.

The OLED Switch has the same specs and is the same gen, just a different screen. Like the Vita 1000 vs Vita 2000, they play the same games. Xbox One and Series are different gens.

Why is switch oled ok but Xbox One X vs Xbox Series X not ok?

just like the person you responded to already said: cos there is like basically no difference between the two. unless you care a lot about screens (in which case you will know what oled means) just get the cheaper one.

Don’t forget the “New 3DS”.

Wow how did I manage that.

Good Ol' New Nintendo 2DS XL naming scheme.

> Consoles aren't specialized hardware for "magic experiences" and everyone knows this, it's just another "device" that happens to be connected to a TV with a controller where people are gatekeeping software availability.

Arguably; Sony and Microsoft have both played it safe for a long time, with their consoles mostly being "just for video games", but it wasn't always like this. Current-gen has VR additions, but the previous generations had things like Kinect, the PS camera addon, things like that. But they seem to have given up on fun things like that, they were innovative but probably not a sweeping commercial success like idk, subscription services.

Nintendo still makes their stuff unique though. The Switch is great, portable, detachable controllers for multiplayer and wiimote-like interaction, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com