Okay, maybe Microsoft calling their new console the “Xbox One X” isn’t really THAT bad. I needed to grab your attention though, so, point to Chani.
The world’s gamers have been glued to their Twitter feeds and various live streams over the past few days for “gamer Christmas”. What’s that you ask? It is a massive video game conference held every year where companies present new and exciting ways they plan to get us to spend our money, more commonly known as E3.
Games, hardware, software… everything is on the table (except backwards compatibility for PlayStation fans 😉 ). Jokes aside though, it is one of the highlights of my year as a gamer. (Who doesn’t love staying up until 3 AM watching live streams from the US?)
What does this have to do with the dumb name, Chani?
Last year during the Xbox conference, they announced they were working on two new consoles;
The Xbox One S – A slimmer, more powerful version of the current generation Xbox One. And “Project Scorpio”, which they explained to be the console everyone had been asking for.
Fast forward a year, Xbox has been releasing small details and teasers about the Scorpio all leading up to their big reveal at E3 2017.
We knew it would be powerful, and we knew it would be fast, but we didn’t know what Xbox was going to call it. A lot of us wanted them to keep its code name “Scorpio”, but Microsoft had other plans.
The Xbox One X, now known as the “premium” console of the three Xbox Ones, is the smallest and most powerful console to date.
(If you’re looking for the techy tech, head on over here. I’m not even going to try and pretend I understand what it all means.)
What I’m way more concerned about is the stupid name they’ve given it.
Here’s why:
When moving from the previous generation’s “Xbox 360” to the “Xbox One”, Microsoft explained they wanted the Xbox to be the all in one home entertainment system. TV, gaming, everything. (Which was better than the fan rumours of “Xbox 720”.)
Then we had the Xbox One Slim (Xbox One S) get released, and that all made sense. As mentioned earlier, it’s smaller than the OG Xbox One.
Cool. Happy with the thinking behind all the naming up until this point.
Then we get to “Project Scorpio”, probably one of the coolest code names for a console I’ve ever read, and they take all of that awesomeness, throw it away, and replace it with “X”. Good job Microsoft.
I understand Microsoft wanting to keep the idea of “The One” going (which is why I have joked saying they should have called it Xbox Neo – Yes that is a Matrix reference. It had to be done).
If they had just stuck with Scorpio, I would be a very happy Xbox fangirl right now.
Personally, I feel “Xbox One S” and “Xbox One X” are way too similar for it to signify the leap forward this console has taken in comparison to the jump from OG Xbox to the S. Not to mention they sound the same too.
There were a bunch of names thrown around on Twitter leading up to launch, with my personal favourite being “Xbox Scorpio”, but we aren’t Microsoft.
Still going with Xbox One X. (X been the Roman numeral for 10).
— GlennZA (@GlennZA) June 9, 2017
With a price tag of R7499.00, they could have kept the Scorpio name.
I’m a fan of the console, and will hopefully be looking into to making an investment, but really Microsoft. Please stop giving things dumb names.
