Like Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Scarlett's final name will reflect the purpose of the console
Although it may look like Xbox made it hard for itself with how it decided to name its consoles, this has actually been intentional.
Before Sony came out and confirmed that its next-gen console will indeed be called PlayStation 5, everyone called it that anyway. It would have been even bigger news had the company decided to ditch that naming convention.
This is much harder to do for Xbox, who has taken a different approach to naming its consoles. According to Phil Spencer, it's not as complicated as it looks. Spencer told Stevivor that Scarlett's official name is going to reflect what the console is all about.
"Our naming convention has been around what we think the capabilities are," he explained.
"Xbox 360 was about the entertainment experience around the box and the box being in the center of that entertainment experience. Xbox One, if you remember our branding early on, was ‘always on input, all in one’. Those names were really built around the purpose of the box."
Because of this approach to naming consoles, Spencer said the company doesn't have to use numbers.
Like PS5, Xbox Scarlett will also launch in holiday 2020. Unlike PS5, however, it looks like we may get two next-gen Xbox consoles instead of one.