I feel even more vindicated now.

A few years ago someone said something about one of the newer Xboxs. Either Xbox One X or Xbox series X. I forget which. And I asked "Is that the newest Xbox?"

And this guy goes off on me. Claims I'm gaslighting him, and that everyone knows which generation each Xbox is/was.

And I honestly didn't. I was genuinely asking.

So now I feel vindicated in my prior ignorance, because with Playstation, it's real simple. 4 is 2 more than 2. So even if you didn't know playstation, you know numbers. So even my nongaming mom could tell you PS4 came after PS3.

But with Xbox, it was just random jibberish. Even Nintendo console names aren't easily placed in order by non-gamers, but at least they have personality.

Like I don't think my mom would know that the N64 came before the Wii. She would have no way to know the order. But she knows what the Wii is. She gave my niece a wii.

But Xbox names just sound like the codes stores internally use to refer to products. Sometimes you see it on the barcode.

So like Hunts BBQ sauce 16oz bottle, might be "HntzBBQ16". Thats what Xbox names feel like.

Xbox series XS.

I wish I had a good joke for that, but I'm really high and thinking about what would happen if Rowdy Roddy Piper had gotten into politics instead of Jesse Ventura.

Which is completely off topic, but can you imagine???

My theory is that the Xbox naming strategy is designed to maximize the confusion of older relatives buying consoles as gifts. You'd be able to pawn more old models off on grandmas who thought it was the right one, and a fraction of the recipients of those old consoles would likely keep it and buy a newer one eventually.

Either that or someone at Sony was blackmailing Microsoft's chief naming officer. I can't think of another coherent reason for that mess.