Facepalm: Imagine if you’re expecting a shiny new Xbox Series X but receive an Xbox One X instead. It’s a scenario some people are facing after the current-gen console shot up Amazon’s sales ranking charts yesterday—the same day XSX pre-orders went live.
To absolutely nobody’s surprise, the Xbox Series X followed the same path as the PS5 and RTX 3080 yesterday as the rush to secure pre-orders caused sites to crash. Microsoft’s machine was out of stock even faster than Sony’s, and it seems some people—or bots, hopefully—got the words “Series” and “One” mixed up.
With the next-generation of consoles almost here, sales of the Xbox One X have been declining for a while, especially this year, so it was a bit strange to see it up 747 percent on Amazon’s Movers & Shakers charts—it was sitting in fourth spot at one point. Currently, the XOX is at number 30.
— Andrew Alerts (@AndrewAlerts) September 22, 2020
Considering the similarity between the consoles’ names, and the difficulty some people might have differentiating the Amazon thumbnails, it’s to be expected that a few confused consumers will buy the Xbox One X by accident. Less tech-savvy parents could easily make the mistake, as could those frantically trying to find a Series X in stock and overreacting when spotting its predecessor. One twitter user admitted to being “half asleep” when mistakenly ordering an XOX.
Amazon isn’t helping things: typing “Xbox Series X” into the search bar brings up numerous Xbox One X bundles below the XSX, which is “currently unavailable,” of course.
It would be nice to think that many of the Xbox One X machines were snapped up by bots unable to distinguish between the two consoles. They were used to grab many PS5s and RTX 3080 units that ended up on eBay, though Nvidia has been taking action to stop the practice—at least when it comes to its official store.
The good news for people who made a genuine mistake is that Amazon will allow the Xbox One X consoles to be returned for a full refund.