Microsoft has won two court cases in China to wrest ownership over a collection of Xbox related domain names bought by a speculator in that country. The disputed domain names that Microsoft now has control over include XboxPhone.com, XboxTablet.com, XboxLiveTV.com, XboxCompanion.com, Xbox8.us and Xbox8.org. It’s easy to understand why the company would wish to own some of these domain names but what about Xbox8.us and Xbox8.org?
There has been previous speculation about the next version of Xbox being called Xbox 8 and the latest news from China throws fuel onto this rumour inferno. The first and most obvious reason is that the new Xbox would be seen as part of the family of Microsoft Windows products with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 coming later this year. Microsoft showed a closer integration between mobile, gaming and desktop/tablet platforms at E3 last month. The company has however made no details available about the successor to the Xbox 360.
Reasons for the next generation Xbox to be called Xbox 8
- Windows 8
- Windows Phone 8
- The console may use Windows 8 as its OS
- An 8 on its side resembles the infinity symbol which could be made good use of in marketing campaigns
- It may be approximately 8 times more powerful than the current generation
- The Xbox 8 may have an 8-core CPU
- 8 is a very lucky number to the vast Chinese population
Gaming and culture website Kotaku managed to get a quote from a Microsoft rep about the domain names “Microsoft often acquires various domain names as part of its ongoing business strategy, but beyond that we have no comment”. Also Fusible points out that another Chinese cyber-squatter owns the most important domain of all for Xbox8 - Xbox8.com.
Below, for your entertainment, we present several very poor Photochop jobs of would-be Xbox 8 logo designs found today scattered throughout the internet.
The Xbox 8 logo won't look like any of these
