Platform acronyms

[syntheticgerbil]

7 7 7

[guybrush_guy]

thats a good point with the PSX but i never refeard to the gamecube as GCN on as GC

[Erkki]

X stands for cool.

[Jake]

I'd heard somewhere that the X was added to the PSX acronym to separate the standalone PlayStation from the originally announced PlayStation ("PS") that Sony was making as an add-on to the SNES (the one that fell through due to Nintendo being itself, in addition to it dealing behind Sony's back with Philips and a bunch of other stuff probably which is correctly documented elsewhere online)... That's what I heard anyway...

GCN is probably called that because someone in Nintendo of America marketing determined that 3 letter acronyms are essential for consoles. The Xbox apparently doesn't count. Maybe its internally referred to as the MXB or MSX or XBO, though, and we''re all just totally in the dark.

[Chris]

If we accept Jake's explanation for why the GCN acronym has three letters, I can supply why it's GCN and not the more intuitive NGC: In Japan, there's a phone company with the name NGC, and Nintendo didn't want to cause any confusion or copyright issues and I guess they figured it would be easier to just apply it worldwide rather than have NGC in the countries without that phone company.

[Esseb]

PSX is a popular acronym for the PlayStation video game console. The "X" stems from the fact that the original design of the PlayStation was intended to be a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES created by Sony, but when the project was halted by Nintendo, Sony redesigned the PlayStation as a stand alone CD based video game system internally dubbed "PlayStation X". The media caught wind of the name and it has stuck ever since.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSX

[loonyboi]

GCN always drove me nuts. I refused to use it on the grounds that it was asinine.

Nintendo also uses AGB for Game Boy Advance in some (but not all) official releases. That too is asinine.

Of course, if we're going to talk about silly names, we might as well acknowledge that Game Boy Advance makes no sense whatsoever. In English it should be Advanced Game Boy.

Although in the end, we should all be thankful it wasn't called Super Hyper Neo Generation Game Boy Advance.

[Esseb]

Whereas Game Boy Advance makes perfect sense in Japanese?

[Marek]

In Japan anything that's English sounds cool. A while ago I saw a Japanese plastic toy robot called "AVOIDER!!!".

[Farbror]

Hmm. Reminds me about this...

A page about exactly what Marek said.

[Twilo]

Gb++;

[Spaff]

this is worse though:

Memory Card (8MB) (for PlayStation®2)

and

analog controller (DUALSHOCK®2)

[ThunderPeel2001]

Hehe! Brings back memories! Thankfully they also allow Memory Card (PS2) as I recall. Have you worked for Sony or are you just incredibly observant, Spaff?

[Nick]

That giiiiirl, dada da dada daah