Branding surely played a role too, microsoft is constantly upping the ante on naming things as terribly as possible. I'm an avid gamer who follows gaming news and I couldnt tell you the difference between an xbox series s vs xbox one vs. xbox series aeiou and sometimes y. It's almost as bad as .net framework -> .net core -> uh.. lets just call it .NET actually that won't be confusing for anybody
100% this (for me at least). I’ve owned all the Xboxes since the first one up through the… Xbox One, I think? Was that one? I think I actually had an Xbox One X as a mid-lifecycle refresh, and when the next one came out and had a terrible name, pricing and storage situation, I threw up my hands and stopped trying to keep up.
The "one xbox one x box" meme is well over a decade old at this point lol. Definitely a "hold my beer" moment from MS after nintendo's uncharacteristic marketing misstep of wii -> wiiu.
Oh yes. It's such an easily avoidable unforced error it's downright incomprehensible - especially after failing by naming their third generation "XBox One" (and the WiiU fiasco providing a cautionary tale). Even Wii was an example of a product good enough that overcame its mildly confusing name. Console naming isn't actually hard.
I blame the rise of "Institutionalized Marketing Departments" inside tech companies dominated by careerist middle-managers who've never actually created any marketing themselves. They just hire and manage creative, ad, PR and branding agencies. The branding agency hires a naming consultancy for a million dollars who has a bunch of hipster creatives brainstorm a short-list of very clever names, do surveys and analyses overflowing with data (and false precision) then package it into an incredible pitch presentation delivered by their most attractive hipster with the coolest foreign accent. All to sell some "too clever by half" high-concept name - because that's the only way to justify their million dollar fee.
I'm pretty sure Sony didn't pay anyone a million dollars to spend three months coming up with "You should name the Playstation 3's successor... Playstation 4."
