The Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S were finally made available to pre-order at most retailers yesterday. With two-week head notice, many were hopeful that the process to purchase their next-generation Xbox systems would go much more smoothly than Sony’s or NVIDIA’s did. Unfortunately, it was just as bad as the latter. Even worse, rather frighting statistic has come about that might suggest that some people may have made a mistake or two during this. Amazon Associate Andrew Alerts tweeted that the Xbox One X’s sales increased dramatically by 747% on the website, which suggests the unfortunate realization; some people got the Xbox One X and the Xbox Series X mixed up and bought the wrong system.
For those who are confused, let us clear this up for you. The current generation of Microsoft’s consoles are called the Xbox One, with the most recent editions dubbed the Xbox One X and Xbox One S. The upcoming next generation is called the Xbox Series X, with the digital version going by Xbox Series S. We’ve already gone over how the names were confusing enough as it is when the system was originally unveiled during The Game Awards in 2019, but this very bad and accidental circumstance only fuels those very same worries we all had nearly a year ago. It also doesn’t help that Amazon, as they always do, waited for all of the other retailers to go live on their stock before making it available on their site as well.
This more than likely led to some customers seeing an Xbox with an X or an S at the end, and going through with the purchase, only for the actual Xbox Series X and S to go live for pre-order at a later time the same day. While the majority of gamers can tell the difference between the two, the sad part of this is that it’s possible that parents, grandparents, or other family members got this for someone and probably didn’t even realize what they’ve purchased. Let’s hope that their holidays aren’t completely ruined by this mistake, and highly encourage anyone who bought their systems that day to double-check their receipts.