To be fair, only Sony follows a consistent naming convention. Nintendo's console names also defy any logic, as did Sega back in the day.

In terms of naming, no other entity in computing will ever be able to surpass IBM solipsistic naming habits:

System 360 OS/2 DB 2 MQ series. PC

It is like IBM just refused to entertain the idea of having competitors, why should it them name a database by any other name than DB?

That is exactly what IBM thought too when they allowed Bill Gates to license the new OS they were supposed to be making for IBM. They had no competition, who are these kids going to sell their OS to?

Nintendo's strategy isn't the absolute worst. They mostly just give new names to new console designs, with modifiers to specify next-gen-without-major-changes. So the SNES was a next-gen NES, the N64 was its own thing, the GameCube was its own thing, the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advanced were iterations on the same thing, DS, DSi, 3DS were all generation steps. WiiU was a next-gen Wii, Switch 2 is a next-gen Switch.

They probably should have called the WiiU the Super Wii or Wii 2 or something, but on the whole they've got a mostly coherent naming convention.

I would put the would put the wii firmly in the gamecube family line. it's a uprated gamecube with a weird controller.

    nes:snes = 6502
    n64 = mips
    gamecube:wii:wiiu = powerpc
    switch:switch2 = arm

Yes, the Wii is essentially an overclocked GameCube with a bit more RAM and as you mentioned, a weird controller.

As a regular human who plays games and doesn't know about chip architectures, one woud probably lump the wii and the switch closer together than the game cube based on the modes in which one can interact with the systems.

Wii is a game cube with a funny controller. Or, wii is a tv-only olde switch.

I appreciate that it has its own name due to being a transitional experience.

I don’t think Nintendo’s scheme was ever that great as it blurred the difference between variant form factors (Game Boy Pocket vs Game Boy, Game Boy Micro/SP vs Game Boy Advance, DS Lite, 2/3DS XL, Wii Mini), pro models with limited exclusives (Game Boy Color, DSi, New 2/3DS), and full on new generations (Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii U).

Sony's naming style for its mobile phone series is also terrible.

You are forgetting Valve!

We got the Steam Controller and the new... Steam Controller.

We also got the Steam machine, as well as the new Steam machine.

Lol

Oh no I just realized the next generation will be called Microsoft 365 Xbox Copilot

There will be an integrated voice LLM that hallucinates advice and "useful" tips as you play and cannot be turned off

You jest.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/gaming-copilot

Sigh… Irony truly is dead.

"All you have to do is follow the damn train, user"

They'll make cheating bots a first party feature just to sell Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Xbox X Copilot S

It will come with 6 GB of RAM, unless you get the Microsoft 365 Xbox X Copilot Dynamics Pro with 13 GB RAM.

It's over 19 years old, but this video is a brutal but hilarious commentary on Microsoft's inherent dysfunction when it comes to product naming and packaging. Still on point decades later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

ROG Ally X vs. ROG Xbox Ally X.

Also, it is possibly the worst console name of all time.

I don't even know what Xbox is now, is it a service, is it a console, I'm not even joking really.

Also visual studio code Vs full fat visual studio. Thanks Microsoft you just made it more difficult to web search both products.

Full fat .Net Vs dotnet core Vs standard or is that .net.

There was also Visual Studio, the Mac app that got renamed and wasn’t the same as Visual Studio, the windows app

The Xbox One.

"Oh you mean the original one?"

No the one that came after the 360.

"The third one?"

No that was the second one, the One was the third.

"OK what are they on now?"

The Series series.

"The Series series?"

Yeah the X and S. Don't confuse that with the Xbox One X or S, or the 360 S.

"Right but what's the difference?"

The X is better than the S because X is a bigger letter. But they run the same games, but they're different. They're the same though.

Nailed the "Who's on first?" vibe.

Oh and your Xbox Controller S won't work with your Xbox One S but it will work with your original Xbox.