Xbox Series X: Microsoft explains new console’s strange name and design

It may be odd looking – but that allows it to be quiet, creators claim

(Microsoft)

Xbox has revealed more details about its strange-looking and -sounding new console.

Microsoft revealed the Xbox Series X at the end of last week, showing off its unusual name and similarly unexpected design. The console looks like a tall, long and rectangular box, though it can also be rested on its side.

Both the design and the name prompted questions about why Microsoft made the decisions that it did. And now the company has revealed some of the thinking behind the new console, in an interview with Xbox boss Phil Spencer published on website Gamespot.

The new console was designed to allow it to be very powerful without making too much sound from its fans or other components, Mr Spencer said.

"There's always this tension between design and the kind of acoustics and cooling and function of the console," he told Gamespot. "And we were not going to compromise on function. I'm just incredibly impressed with the design that they came back with."

Mr Spencer – who is already using the new console in his home – claimed that the Xbox Series X would be no louder than the existing Xbox One.

At the same reveal event, Microsoft also announced the new name. Until that point, it had been known only under the codename Project Scarlett.

The company has used the letter "X" heavily in other branding around the console: not only in the name Xbox, but also in the Xbox One X and Project xCloud, its streaming gaming service. But the Xbox Series X is notable in just how much it relies on the letter, as well as the fact it is not immediately distinct from the previous console.

Microsoft had said before that the console's name would be some indication of what it can do. Xbox One, for instance, may have seemed unclear but was supposed to reference the fact that it was intended as the one place that all of your various media would come together.

Mr Spencer did not elaborate on how the new name fulfilled that aim, or anything more about how it had been chosen. But various people have suggested that the name could be complicated so as to allow for different versions of the console to come along the in future, in the same mode as the Xbox One S and Xbox One X.

Xbox suggested that could happen – but did not confirm that was the entire thinking behind the name.

"Obviously in the name 'Series X', it gives us freedom to do other things with that name so that we can create descriptors when we need to," Mr Spencer said.