Xbox Series X has a new logo

The branding for Microsoft’s next-gen console, Xbox Series X, has been revealed in a new trademark listing.

As described by the trademark, the Series X logo “consists of the word SERIES in a vertical formation to the right of which appears a stylized letter X.”

Up until now Xbox has used its familiar Xbox sphere logo when marketing the next-gen console.

Xbox Series X has been positioned as the “most powerful” games console by Microsoft, and in January the company moved to secure its official marketing slogan: “power your dreams.”

The slogan is likely intended to point towards the significant hardware power behind Xbox Series X, which on paper is ahead of its rival PlayStation 5 in some areas (however, this likely does not tell the full story).

The official Xbox Series X website also features the slogan: “Fastest. Most powerful,” again leaning into the performance capability of the new console.

Meanwhile, the first indication of Sony’s PS5 marketing strategy suggested it plans to promote the console’s speed of access, enabled by its high-bandwidth solid state drive (SSD).

In October 2019 a Sony job advert positioned PS5 as the “world’s fastest console.”

At Sony’s CES press conference in January, CEO Jim Ryan also mentioned “unprecedented speed” in relation to PlayStation 5 software. Sony’s official reveal campaign for PS5 will take place “in the months ahead,” the executive suggested.

PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny has called the console’s ultra-high speed SSD “a true game changer”.

In a recent hardware video Mark Cerny claimed that PS5’s SSD performance is rated at two orders of magnitude faster than PlayStation 4, with the drive able to load 2GB of data in one quarter of a second.

“As game creators, we go from trying to distract the player from how long fast travel is taking – like those Spider-Man subway rides – to being so blindingly fast that we might even have to slow that transition down,” he said.

In another move to improve the speed and accessibility of next-gen games, Sony has filed a patent for ‘Direct Gameplay’, a likely PS5 feature that will allow players to jump into specific parts of games straight from the console’s home menu.

When Sony revealed its own logo for PlayStation 5, the image quickly broke Instagram like records for a games company.

According to a report this week, Microsoft could announce a cheaper next-gen console, titled Xbox Series S, for launch alongside the more powerful X.