Today I found a black XBOX HD Player. It looked very unusual because I usually see the normal version all the time. And when I looked it up, it apparently was given to Microsoft employees that worked in that division. Does anyone have these on Assembler and how many were made?
They were given to MS employees directly involved with the production of the players at the time. They came with a black media remote as well. Limited amounts, I'm not certain.
This is some better information I found online from teamxbox. It sounds like they were given only to the HD-DVD Microsoft team. That team could not of been 1000-2000 employees if there were that many made. Andy Pennell, a Microsoft engineer tworking on HDi (the interactivity layer for HD DVD), has posted pictures of a limited edition black Xbox 360 HD DVD Player he received as a "Ship-It" award. We just got some goodies on our team: Xbox 360 HD DVD drives in black! These limited-edition drives were made especially for those of us who helped work on the product, and come along with a black remote control. Although this was distributed internally at Microsoft, if the company took the time to manufacture black drives and remote controls of its HD DVD player, it is possible that in the future they will be available for sale. Keep your fingers crossed. All I need now is an Xbox 360 at home to plug it into and I'll be set! (It's no use to me at work as retail drives don't work on Xbox development kits). Different teams at Microsoft give different things to team members as "Ship-It" awards, and how good they are depends on the coolness of the team and the coolness of the product. Fortunately our team is cool in both regards. My old team (Visual C#) once gave us empty cardboard boxes of the product as a Ship-It award. Not-very-cool-at-all. Unlike some other Microsoft-internal goodies, we are permitted to sell these, so if you want one you might be lucky and a co-worker could put one on eBay. Or not. [Update 4/20/07: the rules have changed and in fact we are not allowed to sell these after all] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andypennell/archive/2007/02/15/xbox-360-hd-dvd-drive-now-in-black.aspx And we all know that the black ones would never come out publicly because of bad timing. I think it was days after the release date that HD DVD's would be discontinued.
Ah, is that what they were - when I was living in Seattle I saw one of those in a Goodwill, and remembered being surprised by the case color, but I didn't think much about it because HD-DVD was dead by that point.
There are also a lot of really good looking recreations. I got one of these cheap and it's so well done it is very hard to tell they are not legit. The key is the black remote those were only available with the real deal.
Here is 1 picture I attached. I have several more in better detail but I reached my picture attachment quota and cannot add anymore.
Seeing it was in Seattle, I suspect it was probably a real one - I doubt anyone would bother making a reproduction version and then giving it to Goodwill.
Yeah that was basically my same thoughts when I saw one at a Seattle goodwill a few months ago. I decided to purchase it thought since it was only $15.
Was it the one in Capitol Hill? It would be pretty funny is it was the same unit I saw, although that would mean it had been there years...
No, it was the same just a few blocks up from the International District. Most Goodwills don't let things sit on the shelves for more than a month before they send them off to their outlet stores.
Comparing the pictures above, the faceplate on neogeo's looks to be light gray like the faceplate on Charels white HD-DVD drive. Unless its the the light, the black one looks to have a darker faceplate.
