E3 2016 is looming, and it looks like it may bring with us a new spate of consoles— not the Nintendo NX, but possibly the PlayStation 4.5 and the Xbox One And A Half. Let’s hope the latter two aren’t actually called those things. The NX, on the other hand, is a pretty good name. Let’s talk about console names for a second—not this purported new half-step generation, but the current names. Specifically, the Xbox One, the most widely derided console name in a good ten years. You know—the same widely derided name we use all the time now without a second thought. Whoops. Looks like we got marketed to again!
Whoops, We Got Used To The Name Xbox One
Xbox One is a terrible name for a console. This is essentially indisputable. After all, there already was an Xbox 1, namely the original Xbox. The name is even more confusing than ‘Wii U,’ which I’ll be the first to admit is no great shakes either. It sounds like the old console, not a new one. And the Internet told Microsoft that, en masse. Microsoft’s reasoning was that the new console was an all-in-one entertainment device, but come on. Some honcho or focus group dreamed it up and pushed it through.
And guess what? Microsoft was right and we were wrong. Not because the name “Xbox One” is good, which it isn’t. But because in the end, it doesn’t matter. Microsoft has good marketing—better than Nintendo’s was for the Wii U, certainly. It didn’t convince the world that the Xbox One was an all-in-one entertainment system (sorry, Kinect), or even that it was a good name. All Microsoft needed to do was make everyone realize that its new console was called “Xbox One.” This was a stunning success. Everybody in their target demographic knows this (which is still probably not true for the Wii U).
And now, if you buy an Xbox One game at Gamestop, you don’t think twice about the name. It rolls off the tongue because it’s second-nature. If you stop and think about it, you’ll probably still think it’s a dumb name. And even though the Xbox One has done substantially worse than the PlayStation 4, that’s not because of the name. A confluence of other factors drove the difference in sales. The name is dumb, but we bought in because marketing works.
