Will the new Xbox to be called Xbox 8? – Video Games Update
Microsoft secures a batch of Xbox related domain names which consist of XboxLiveTv.com, XboxTablet.com, Xbox8.org, Xbox8.us, XboxCompanion.com and XboxPhone.com. Microsoft won these domains in a legal dispute from a resident of China who goes by the name
Cheng Juan.
The legal claim by Microsoft against the defendant, in June 2012, stated that the defendant had no rights or legitimate interests in the domain name and was using them in bad faith. The judges ruled in favour of Microsoft on July 2012
Now it is unclear if Microsoft is actually going to use these domains or was this legal battle over the domain names the result of Microsoft protecting its Intellectual Property (IP).
Microsoft is currently developing Windows 8 and plans to push that with all of its products, so it is likely that the next Xbox will also feature some form of Windows 8 for its operating system. Xbox 8 does sound like a potential name for the upcoming next
generation console, the reason being that gamers will be able to relate it to other Microsoft products like Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. It definitely sounds better than Xbox 720, which is the current code name being used for the upcoming console by gamers
online.
Microsoft went for the name ‘Xbox 360’ for the current console because the company felt that the name ‘Xbox 2’ sounded inferior when compared with the Playstation 3. So we can rule out ‘Xbox 3’ right away since Sony will be bringing out the Playstation 4,
provided that they don’t also decide to rebrand.
The downside of using Xbox 8 and scraping the ‘360’ from the title is that the Xbox 360 is commonly known amongst fans as ‘360’. Changing the brand name is not always a good idea since not many fans keep up with the news and they might not know that the
next console is a successor of the Xbox 360 if there is no ‘360’ in the title.
Another downside of using ‘Xbox 8’ is that the product will be linked with the success of Windows 8, which could be beneficial but could also turn out disastrous if Windows 8 were to be a flop like the previous Windows Vista.
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