Oh, Microsoft

You would think that with all the billions in your bank account you would direct a few more dollars towards your marketing department. Case in point: the current naming scheme of the Xbox. The first release was unimaginatively called the Xbox - or DirectX Box. For those not in the know, Windows uses DirectX for all its graphical and audio needs, and so, Xbox was basically a Windows PC which can only play games. This was then followed on by Xbox 360 ... and then the Xbox One - or X-Bone. Colour me confused - the marketeers had somehow created a new numbering system where they go from (1) to 360 and then back to one.

 

And all would be right with the world if their marketeers had just left it at that. They then decided that they would fragment the X-Bone with the X-Bone S (which is the refactored/diskless version) and X-Bone X (which is the slightly more powerful version of the stock X-Bone). They then decided that this wasn't confusing enough so the next generation of XBox will be known as - wait for it - the Xbox Series X (for the top-end version) and the Xbox Series S (which is the less powerful than the Series X and less powerful than the X-Bone X ... but with raytracing). I look forward to having parents around the world picking up the last generation X-Bone X and thinking they got a good deal on their next-gen console.

Notably, the Xbox Series X can be (puerilely) abbreviated to Xbox SeX. At this time I must think the marketeers are leaning into their five-year-old mentality - or they're taking a leaf out of Musk's playbook. Whatever the case, having two different hardware targets will cause fragmentation and result in sub-par releases for the top-end version as developers will not be arsed utilising the full capabilities of the top-end if that means having to dedicate twice the level of effort testing and optimising for two different hardware targets. Even if I'm a PlayStation fanboy, the two PS5 versions scheduled for release will utilise the same hardware for both the disk and non-disk version. There won't be any fragmentation and will result in games fully utilizing hardware (if the developer is worth their salt.) 

 I don't enjoy any company merely being successful because there's no competition - we are all better for a healthy triopoly (if you include Nintendo) as that will force all parties to do their best. I really hope that I am wrong with regards to the next-gen XBox's ... but my spider senses are tingling even now.