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The terrible Xbox naming scheme means you might have purchased a last-gen console

Whoops.

Xbox series s and series s on white background
Image: Microsoft

Yesterday, September 22, Microsoft opened preorders for its next-gen consoles, the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. Now, if you tried to get your order in, you had to struggle with bots, websites crashing, and artificial limits on how many total preorders Microsoft was allowing.

All of those issues might be bad, but we knew beforehand that those would be issues. I mean, websites crash under the strain of new releases at the best of times, and 2020 is definitely not the best of times. What those shoppers trying to get the next-generational consoles possibly didn’t bargain for, is having to sift between the names of Microsoft’s previous Xbox consoles, the Xbox One X and Xbox One S.

Yes, some people trying to buy an Xbox Series X (the upcoming one), mistakenly bought an Xbox One X instead, based on Amazon’s sales ranking, which showed sales of the Xbox One X up nearly 750-percent at one point. Now, those sales charts only show the last hour before, showing the Xbox One X at Number Four on the chart at that time. We don’t really know what the figure was before, and it’s a measure of how far the listing climbed the sales charts, not an indication of actual unit sales.

Still, it could have been handled better, maybe with Amazon changing its internal search terms to go to the new consoles instead of the prior generation, which nobody really wanted to buy yesterday. Could it be badly-written bots, that just purchased anything with “Xbox” and “X” in their listings? Possibly, or it could just be human error, in the rush to grab the new console from limited stocks.

Then again, if Microsoft can’t get the name right on their own press releases, what hope does the average consumer have?

I guess it’s time to go and check your Amazon order history and make sure that the console you wanted is actually the console showing in your order list. If you did mistakenly snag the older, Xbox One X, at least Amazon makes it easy for you to return your unwanted console. We wish you better luck when the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S actually release on November 10.

What do you think? Surprised that people were buying the wrong Xbox console or is this to be expected, all things considered? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.

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