What’s in a name? Dave McCarthy explains why it’s called the Xbox One X

Since its reveal at E3 2017, fans have been debating about the Xbox One X. It’s name, price, and game line up are all hot topics across the board. During an exclusive interview with MCV, head of Xbox operations Dave McCarthy sat down with an Xbox One X and answered questions about the next console from Microsoft.

Particularly, what many fans have been curious about is why is it called an Xbox One X? The team understandably wanted to slide it into line with others of the Xbox One family, but the years of calling it ‘Project Scorpio’ has become a fonder name for many in comparison to the Xbox One X revealed at E3 2017.

“There was a real appeal to going back to our roots as an ‘X’ box team. That original Xbox was founded on a principle of real technical innovation, opening up some new avenues for games developers, and gamers overall. So it didn’t take us long to land on the X name,” McCarthy explains. “It spoke to us, it meant something in our history. So, as a team, we gravitated to the name pretty quickly. But I like Scorpio as a project code name as well.”

According to McCarthy, the historical representation of the X is meant to show technical innovation. Even the look of the Xbox One X is black like the original, something that the interviewer also brought up. When asked whether the sleek dark color was intentional in comparison to the white Xbox One S, McCarthy replied:

“Were we that purposeful?” McCarthy muses. “At the launch of the original Xbox One, we did a ‘we made this’ white version of the console for our employees. So we had white in mind, it was actually pretty awesome, people like the design of it in their rooms. And obviously putting together the Xbox One S was a pretty special design moment for us.

“Did I know that we were going to land back on black specifically? That might be a bit of a stretch, but it was definitely a journey we went on from launch with that special edition. We also did a special edition of the original Xbox One in white that sold very well.”

Whether purposeful or not, the black color of the Xbox One X and the name of it is clearly attempting to redefine the Xbox family as the more powerful consoles to date, even so far as saying that it’s “in a different league” compared to the PlayStation 4 Pro. McCarthy also noted that he only recently received a prototype and in that time playing with his son, the Xbox One X was easy to set up and play with better performance on already released games like Halo 5 and Battlefield 1.

The next console from Microsoft will be launching on November 7. Have you decided if the heavy $499 price tag is worth the quality gaming experience or will you be sticking to the now discounted Xbox One S?