Games and Numbers do not go together

A quick, high school algebra refresher: The point in a < or > points to the smaller number. So 3<5. or 5>3. The following article attempts to turn that on its head. “/” is a division symbol and “*” is a multiplication symbol.

Recently a lot of news has come up about the XBOX ONE’s naming, because the second XBOX was called the XBOX 360 because it was going up against the PS3. 2<3, right? So I decided to look at how companies named their consoles and/or games.

Firstly, Nintendo. Their naming of consoles makes no sense. While we have the XBOX 1 and PS4, Nintendo decides to go from the Wii to the Wii U. ??? WHY ??? But what do I know? They went from the 3DS to the 2DS…And Microsoft’s not much better. XBOX. XBOX 360. XBOX ONE. You’d think Apple would have some sort sense, right? Wrong. It went OK until the 3GS and now Apple thinks that they have to add “S” to everything. But wait! Now they’ve gone from capital “S”‘s to a “s”. And they’ve also released a “c” as well. Because S/2 = C… And Apple’s software isn’t much better. iOS 6.1.3 to iOS 7.0.0. What happened to the 8.7 numbers in between? Ah well. AT least PlayStation can be counted on…PlayStation. PlayStation 2. PlayStation 3. PlayStation 4. Great, until you get to the portable console. PlayStation Portable. PlayStation Vita. What is this?

And games don’t to much to redeem the consoles. Why are all the Final Fantasy games numbered with Roman Numerals? Why are the sequels numbered with a dash, e.g. Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2? Should it not just be Final Fantasy XI? And don’t get me started on Kingdom Hearts…isn’t 358/2 = 179? Shouldn’t it be Kingdom Hearts 179 Days? The Elder Scrolls didn’t have any numbering until no. 3 (Morrowind), and Guitar Hero isn’t much better. At least the Gran Turismo series makes sense.

The Moral of the Story: Although all these numbers need to be used in coding to make the games, clearly actually naming the games is a different matter.