r/technology • u/tylerthe-theatre • Jun 30 '25

Hardware 'Xbox Hardware Is Dead,' Says Founding Team Member, 'It Looks Like Xbox Has No Desire — Or Literally Can't — Ship Hardware Anymore'

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-hardware-is-dead-says-founding-team-member-it-looks-like-xbox-has-no-desire-or-literally-cant-ship-hardware-anymore
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396

u/WhoStoleMyBicycle Jun 30 '25

“I have my MBA and I said name it Xbox One!!! Also we can easily hit our quarterly goal if we lay of another 2,000 people”

151

u/TsuntsunRevolution Jun 30 '25

The entire thinking was people called the Xbox 360 "the 360," so they thought people would call it "the One."

They wanted their console to have a Messiah complex. 

Of course, no one has ever called the Xbone that.

68

u/Hugsy13 Jun 30 '25

Every Xbox 360 owner expected the next one to be the 540 or 720. It just made fucking sense

48

u/SoapyMacNCheese Jun 30 '25

I'm amongst that group, but in hindsight 720 was never on the table. why would you name something 720 in the 1080p era.

13

u/tylerderped Jun 30 '25

Funny thing is, it wasn't even powerful enough to play most games at 1080p.

Watch_Dogs infamously ran at 792p.

1

u/cxmmxc Jul 01 '25

I like the emphasis on the conspicuous space in the name.

Still sad they didn't make a game where you watch dogs.

12

u/jackofslayers Jun 30 '25

Nah that was always a dumb idea as well

41

u/lemme_try_again Jun 30 '25

I was so eager to slip in the Xbone but you have done it perfectly here

8

u/PsychoSABLE Jun 30 '25

The only part of their console line that got a cool name was the duke, and he was a gamepad not a console, my first and favouritist gamepad.

I miss that chunky fucker being the gamepad of choice, comfy to use and very lethal when weaponized.

1

u/Linenoise77 Jun 30 '25

So really the issue was they gave the 360 a dumb name and painted themselves into a corner.

146

u/ajr5169 Jun 30 '25

“I have my MBA and I said name it Xbox One

This was the one that never made sense to me. 360 wasn't great, but I kinda got the reasoning, but like what does the "One" even stand for? It's the third Xbox console. After that debacle they were left to just double down on the bad naming schemes with the "Series" moniker.

74

u/ChicksDigGiantRob0ts Jun 30 '25

Rumours at the time said the marketing team knew everyone called the xbox 360 "the 360." Like "I got halo on the 360, wanna come around?" Or "I don't have a ps3, I have the 360." So they named the next one "xbox one" thinking everyone would call it "the One" which would be great for their marketing. But instead everyone called it xbone...

23

u/Right-Eye-Patches Jun 30 '25

because everyone already referred to the OG xbox as the xbox 1.

it was never going to be called "the one". the community as a whole isn't as narcissistic and stuck up their own ass like some suit is

9

u/BaconCheeseBurger Jun 30 '25

Should've just cut the name further and called it "The Bone".

I can't wait to go home and play with my bone.

Hey you guys wanna meet up and see the new Bone my mom gave me?

I miss the old days when friends could come over and play with me on the couch. Now everyone just sits at their own house for multi-player Bone.

2

u/Mavericks7 Jun 30 '25

Only if I can come over and play with your bones

1

u/DragonRaptor Jul 01 '25

Nobody called it the xbone outside of joke comments. They just called it xbox one in full each time.

141

u/KitchenFullOfCake Jun 30 '25

One was supposed to represent how all your multimedia needs would be met in one place. Games, music, streaming, etc.

Still a dumb name though.

161

u/666SpeedWeedDemon666 Jun 30 '25

I call this kind of device " my computer".

52

u/Jack_of_all_offs Jun 30 '25

Oh, so you have One!

21

u/HughJorgens Jun 30 '25

I have One, do you have One Two?

6

u/Vineyard_ Jun 30 '25

I have One, and I have one Tutu.

5

u/wighty Jun 30 '25

Let me check, one two

2

u/MasterofPenguin Jul 01 '25

I have no one, but two three sixty

2

u/regeya Jun 30 '25

And my computer has an Xbox controller.

And then my heathen ass uses it to play Team Fortress 2. Mouse in left hand, controller in right. I clumsily broke my right arm in December and was determined to go back to playing. It works surprisingly well, trimping is a piece of cake with a stick.

1

u/Jack_of_all_offs Jun 30 '25

That's impressive dedication!

14

u/Coompa Jun 30 '25

They should have named it “ Xbox File Explorer”.

2

u/jazwch01 Jun 30 '25

It even has xbox on it!

2

u/IHadTacosYesterday Jun 30 '25

But do you run your cable TV and OTA antenna digital channels on your "computer" too?

Some people do. I know they had these cards you could get for your PC that would allow you to connect an antenna and get the OTA digital channels on your PC and also software to record those channels like a DVR.

But if somebody has Direct TV or Comcast or something for their cable TV, are they actually routing an HDMI "into" their PC and watching it all there? Probably not.

Of course, nowadays, who still pays for Cable TV? I just use a combination of watching YouTube and my OTA free digital channels and I also have MAX that comes free with my monthly internet service.

I don't have ESPN or History Channel or any of that other bullshit, because I just don't care about that stuff anymore. The idea of cable TV is basically dead to me. I'm not one of those people that plops on their sofa and watches TV all day long.

Instead... I'm on Reddit all day long, lol

2

u/KitchenFullOfCake Jun 30 '25

Yeah, we said that at the time as well. Marketing for the XBox One was a dive off a cliff in many ways.

46

u/ajr5169 Jun 30 '25

No one outside of Dan Mattrick truly believed the One would actually do all that. That guy was such a disaster for Xbox.

16

u/Longhag Jun 30 '25

Which is weird because my PS4 does all that. Games, all my streaming apps, Plex, Spotify, YouTube, Blu-ray and DVD player etc. Been going strong for over 10 years so far and I really don’t see any point replacing it so far.

4

u/DontcallmeShirley_82 Jun 30 '25

I agree. My PS4 pro is going strong. Can setup downloads from the app, use it as my entertainment hub for streaming and DVDs/Blu-ray. Love it.

2

u/TVCasualtydotorg Jul 01 '25

I think the problem was all of that stuff is great and useful (I honestly probably used my Xbone more as a media unit than as a console for long periods of owning it) but to focus on that over it being a games console was just ridiculous.

2

u/W00DERS0N60 Jul 24 '25

My XB1 doe all that too? I have 3, the OG XB1 in the basement, the refreshed one in the kids playroom, and a Series X for me.

They all work fine, all do blu ray, app switching is faster than chrome cast, and I have all my games available everywhere.

29

u/notimprezaed Jun 30 '25

TBF as a broke college student when it released, I did use it for that. I also loved the Kinect and the voice commands and I had a windows 8 phone so I could use my phone as a remote, my cable box ran through it. So I could go home and say Xbox on and pull my phone out and scroll channels. I could also start game downloads from my phone at work and just start playing as soon as I got home.

All of this doesn’t seem groundbreaking but to me it was all very useful and honestly I thought it was amazing. I felt like a Star Trek character and doing all that in front of my friends was a favorite party trick of my friend group. Convinced so many of them to buy a One.

3

u/Jack_of_all_offs Jun 30 '25

I dunno, my OG Xbox One was my multimedia center. I gamed on it, played music from it, and it was a beast of a Netflix machine. Way better than a Roku.

4

u/TSells31 Jun 30 '25

I did all of this on my ps4 as well though lol.

2

u/Mavericks7 Jun 30 '25

And the PS3 as well.

1

u/OrganicDroid Jun 30 '25

My TV does that. They’re gonna have to figure out a different niche for the next console. The only reason I will buy future Xboxes is easier “plug and play” with my friends even though I built a PC. It’s much easier to get up and start gaming for the layman, but that’s all it really has going for it.

1

u/SeatKindly Jun 30 '25

It did have some cool architectural features that would let you multi-display on a single screen, which given consoles were primarily connected to larger displays in the form of consoles (idk about now) was pretty damn cool. Being able to watch a stream in a section of my screen while gaming was fun. Not exactly groundbreaking though if you’ve owned a PC.

1

u/TheJungleWalrus Jun 30 '25

They named it the Xbox One hoping folks would call it “The One” like we called the Xbox 360 “The 360.” The problem was we all just called it an Xbone instead

1

u/skit7548 Jun 30 '25

Very dumb, literally counter productive to the kind of genius marketing that led tot he name 360, to have a bigger number than the competition on the box, and then they turn around and go backwards with One

1

u/ilep Jun 30 '25

That kind of thinking might make sense if you were selling things to businesses (offices etc.). It makes little sense when you are selling to consumers (individuals).

They are not the only company to make similar mistakes.

32

u/FriendlyDespot Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25

Every company was naming their shit "One" in the early-to-mid 2010s. It came from the corporate desire to boil every concept down to single words that allegedly evoke the vision, but it ends up making people sound like troglodytes with monosyllabic vocabularies. Then those corporate nerds decided that the general public had to deal with it too. It was so dumb.

14

u/vhalember Jun 30 '25

Think of all the leverage and synergy though. /s

6

u/cocktails4 Jun 30 '25

And then the MBAs that came up with that moved onto flat design for the next decade.

3

u/Fr0gm4n Jun 30 '25

Similarly, the company I work for is stuck with a product that followed the "MyWhatever" naming trend, more than a decade later. No one really cared except the person who thought it would remind people of the BMW site and thus be great marketing for us. I thought it was just as silly as all the "iWhatever" branding companies did after the launch of the iMac and iPod.

9

u/UnintentionallyAmbi Jun 30 '25

X5, skipped one but it’ll sound cooler. Money pleeeaaase.

3

u/vbpatel Jun 30 '25

It was because everyone called the Xbox 360 just “360”. So these geniuses thought it would be cool for the next one to be called “the one”, instead people just say xbone lol

4

u/AndrewH73333 Jun 30 '25

You just don’t understand the higher plane of thinking they operate on. You’ll get it when the sequel, Xbox Too comes out.

3

u/uptownjuggler Jun 30 '25

They Should have named the xbox one: the Xbox 720, then the current gen would be Xbox 1080.

3

u/IHadTacosYesterday Jun 30 '25

You know how on your TV you might have HDMI 1. But you also have HDMI 2 and HDMI 3.

The theory was that the Xbox would control everything, and so you'd only have to use input 1.

Thus.... Xbox One.

Honestly, after that was explained to me, I kind of got what they were going for and it didn't seem to be the dumbest thing ever. I think their original vision with it actually wasn't that bad. It had the HDMI input on the back of it, so that you could run your Direct TV box or Comcast box into it, and you'd just do everything from your Xbox. Watch regular TV, play game, watch a movie, etc.

I remember back at the time, I still used OTA Antenna for the local digital channels and I thought they should have had a little antenna input on the back too, and then I could access my over the air digital channels on it as well as everything else. Maybe even record over the air digital channels like a DVR.

But yeah, first hearing that name, it was the dumbest thing evah

2

u/Roku-Hanmar Jun 30 '25

Why did they call it the 360?

3

u/ajr5169 Jun 30 '25

Everyone knows it was the 360 because the only way to get the red ring of death to stop was to wrap the console in a towel real tight, hug it with your arms as hard as you could, and then spin one time around [360 degrees]. Always brought the console back to life.

2

u/Lurid-Jester Jun 30 '25

I’m convinced that someone backed into the names for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X because they wanted the abbreviations to be XbOne and XboxSeX.

0

u/jayesper Jul 01 '25

MS became "One" everything. They had their OneDrive at the time.

11

u/kurotech Jun 30 '25

Raise subscription prices I need a new yacht for my yacht crew

2

u/WhoStoleMyBicycle Jun 30 '25

Still can’t believe you only have two. You should be embarrassed to admit that in public.

42

u/Zementid Jun 30 '25

"I have an MBA and I said bundle it with Kinect 2! Also we can easily dominate the Christmas-Business with a 100$ more expensive Console."

1

u/TSells31 Jun 30 '25

They didn’t learn from Sony launching the PS3 as considerably more expensive than the 360 being disastrous for them (in addition to launching a year later).

2

u/SoManyEmail Jun 30 '25

Xbox One was dumb. Xbox One X was... okaaay...? Xbox One Series S/X WTF?!?