25 Years Later, The $36,000 X-Shaped Xbox Prototype Returns — And It Actually Works
Phones shot up and jaws dropped — this might be the coolest thing you'll see all year.
Back in 2000, Microsoft wheeled out a giant metal X and promised the future of gaming. It was ridiculous and awesome. Now, 25 years later, someone actually built a working version of that thing you remember from photos and grainy GDC clips. And yes, it runs Halo.
The original metal X: cool, expensive, not shipping to stores
In March 2000 at the Game Developers Conference, Bill Gates unveiled the first-ever Xbox prototype. It looked like a literal X, not a box, to show off the muscle of DirectX (a tweaked version of which powered the original console). The catch: that prototype was milled from a solid block of aluminum. Price tag at the time: about $18,000, which is roughly $36,000 today. Understandably, the retail Xbox ended up in a much cheaper ABS plastic, you know, box.
A fan dream people joked about for decades, now real
Hardcore Xbox folks have half-seriously wished they could play Halo on that giant metal X since the day it appeared. Tito from Macho Nacho Productions actually went and did it, with sponsorship from circuit board manufacturer PCBWay. He set out to recreate the prototype to its exact dimensions, make it work with real hardware, and make it a lot less absurdly expensive. Somehow, he hit all three.
If you just want the payoff, jump to around 39:00 in Macho Nacho's video. The build process is worth it if you like watching impossible projects slowly become possible.
How he nailed the shape (without borrowing Microsoft’s)
Since you cannot exactly borrow the one in Redmond, Tito and his collaborator Wesk gathered photos and videos of the display unit at the Microsoft Experience Center in New York City. Using that visual archive and some high-end tricks — including something called Gaussian splatting — they reverse-engineered the exact (or as-close-as-humanly-possible) dimensions.
The shell: less than a car, more than a weekend project
Wesk whipped up a 3D model, and Tito ordered a custom-cut aluminum shell with a media-blasted finish to mimic the prototype's rough matte shine. Total for the shell alone: $5,622.66. That is not pocket change, but it is a far cry from $18,000 — and that number is before adding the guts.
The guts: original Xbox hardware, carefully rehoused
Inside, Tito mounted original manufacturer Xbox components — motherboard, DVD drive, controller ports, and power supply — on interior fixtures, then used 3D-printed brackets to secure everything. For the finishing touch that sold the illusion, he wired an animated Xbox logo powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico. It boots the animation instantly and loops it until you shut the system down. Functionally unnecessary? Completely. Absolutely essential to the vibe? Also yes.
So, does it actually work?
'It operates like any other Xbox, because that is what it is, a factory system repackaged into this one-of-a-kind shell.'
Under the hood, he added some smart modern tweaks that make it nicer to live with day-to-day:
- HDMI video output instead of old-school AV
- USB-C power supply
- A modified motherboard that can boot games straight from an SSD, lets you tune fan speeds, and opens the door to a bunch of other handy tricks
It is loud in every way, and I love it
The final build is a showpiece: gaudy, ostentatious, objectively kind of ugly, and somehow beautiful if your gamer brain was forged in the early 2000s. It looks indistinguishable from the museum prototype, costs a fraction of what the original block-of-aluminum stunt would run today, and it actually plays games. Mission accomplished.