That rebranding and Microsoft's abjectly terrible product naming convention essentially killed the Xbox. What the absolute fuck were they smoking when they went from Xbox, to Xbox 360, to Xbox One, to Xbox One X, to Xbox Series S and X? Like anybody wants an enterprise gaming console.

Absolutely bonkers considering how strong they came in with the first Xbox, Halo, and Xbox Live.

And the rationale that they couldn't go from Xbox to Xbox 3 because of the PS3 is abject bullshit. They skipped Windows 9, after all.

Nintendo almost managed to do the same to their own gaming machines with the absolutely insanely inadequate Nintendo Wii / Wii U decision making.

As an engineer and a consumer / customer, I simply cannot understand why there's a need to complicate things.

You have a Thing, right? It sells, right? You develop the next Thing? Great! Call it Thing 2. Instant success.

I wonder why car manufacturers don't operate like that. They might add a number to the model (e.g. "Golf IV"), but it will always be advertised as "The new VW Golf".

What would've happened if Nintendo simply would've advertised "The new Nintendo Switch"?

Never thought about that, but now it's an interesting thought experiment.

In the world of cars, industrial design is the version number. Beyond that, VW just wants to sell their latest Golf to whomever is buying a new hatchback today. End of strategy.

Numbering helps sell electronics because it makes it clear that your old phone/console is old and "needs" upgrading. It's also critical for selling software exclusive to a certain hardware generation.

They did that with the "New Nintendo 3DS". It was confusing as hell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_3DS

Things are going wrong when you have a model name like "New Nintendo 2DS XL" to describe a product IMO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nintendo_2DS_XL

I think they made like three games for that one.

Many people replace their car on a regular basis because it is considered a wear item.

With computer/console, you have to pretend the devicethey are still enjoying is obsolete to invent a need to replace it

Imagine how much more money Sony could have made if they called their latest game console Playstation Ø

Funny that you used that symbol, as it would have been a fantastically bad choice for clarity in product naming. I'm going to assume that you're German speaking and think of it as meaning "average".

In my head it would have been the "Playstation Island", while for most of the world it would probably have been the "Playstation Empty Set".

Not as fantastically bad as “Xbox One” though.

You mean the X-bone?

Playstation half-diminished, a.k.a Playstation mi7(b5)/"minor seven flat five"

Fortunately while Squarenix is still important to Playtstation (and Tetsuya Nomura to Squarenix), it's not the juggernaut it once was in the early 2000.

(for those who don't get it: Tetsuya Nomura is a director at Squarenix and known (amongst other) for its Kingdom Heart series who ends up with word salad title such as "Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue" or "Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days")