This is the majority of the info. We're still talking, and there are some unanswered things, but it's a start. Orange Unit There are likely only 1 or 2 around that were left over from color trials. We ran a ton of different colors of top cases only at GE Color Express in NY Based on that we ordered a few bags of material that ended up in full sets of plastics - all the colors that you know of today. We did the same with controllers, which is how we ended up with a few matching sets of controllers and consoles. If you note, the Orange in the controller doesn't match very well, it is a different material, made by a different supplier, in a completely different part of the world, it was just a trial to see if we wanted to do a special orange box and controller to coincide with Xbox Live (launch or anniversary, I can't really remember) since orange was the branding color for Live, and hence the Live jewel sticker on the controller. If I recall, I showed these to marketing, and they asked for 1, and then later asked for another to use for promotion. The second unit could have ended up with an employee in marketing, or an exec of some sort. There was a third unit I made for a friend, but I am pretty sure it didn't have the "Halo" silk screen on it, it was stolen from his house in the Yakima area a few years ago. Other Colors: The pile of different colored plastics was taking up a corner of my office, so I ended up giving away a few sets to co workers down the hall, who may have put a few together for themselves, but I don't think they actually did anything with them. I ended up building up 1 of each console special edition at the time, and sending them off to MS Archives, I am sure they are sitting in a dusty box somewhere. There were a couple other really wild colors shot, candy apple red, and a semi clear with color shifting bead filler. Red came out ok, but just looked odd. The color shifting beads just looked bad. I can pretty much guarantee those got destroyed, you'll never see it, I would have only had 1 or 2 max. Xbox Launch Team 2001 Probably about 500-1000 made for HW launch team members, team was pretty small at the time, so there could have been less, but for sure more than 60. Skeleton Black Japan launch edition, we made 50K. Panzer Dragoon Orta We were supposed to make about 3K of these, which we did in plastics. Then we had to silk screen these by hand at the factory in Mexico. The factory found some kid off the streets with a hand silk screen set up and we did these all by hand in the middle of the night. I was with the marketing manager from MSKK (Japan), Kenji Nakayama. We inspected ever single one of these and ended up shipping only 1300 of the best ones. What a nightmare this was White Anniversary Pad printing a corner of the top on the texture area was not ideal, but a ton easier than the Panzer Dragoon silk screening we did. you can't imagine what a nightmare that was. Probably only made 1000 of those as well. A logistics provider in Japan did the customized print on demand stuff. DVT3 Metal Jewels the decision making around the jewel was purely cosmetic based. I think Robbie Bach (the VP) ended up making the call on the Jewel, and that was pretty much unheard of someone that high getting involved in a HW design issue. I think a metal stamped jewel would have ultimately been cheaper and easier, but it just looked too cheap. They really wanted the jewel to be back lit with EL paper, if we could have designed that into the case way back when, they would have wanted it, but got stuck with the lit up ring around the power button - whoops. Translucent Green Number EU and other holiday tie in launches. We made tons of these with different silk screens on the front... Interestingly the back story on the green is cool. we used to make our early DevKits in this green so we could control the units sent out to developers. XDKs, were slightly different and made in clear, but for the same reason. Everyone kept saying these looked cool and should make these for production, but the clear colors are actually shot in Poly Carbonate, while the Black/Green solid cases were ABS. ABS is a much softer and forgiving plastic, and the tools were designed for this material. We thought we might be damaging the tools shooting excessive units in PC, but fundamentally the tools were so well designed (kudos to the tooling manager) it didn't matter. Xbox Live Controller We got a pouch with a controller, and special headset at the launch of live. Dukes Duke was actually the original US big controller (named after the Dev PM's son, who happens to live nearby). Jewels for controllers were run by the peripheral team, but I got involved with them later in production. I think the early jewels were molded? but later switched to a printed sticker with poured urethane over them, quite common in the nameplate industry. Duke was cancelled pretty quickly once Akebono (the smaller japan controller) became available. Once we changed to akebono we never looked back at producing Duke, it was just too big. there could have been the notion of some other first party MS colors for the controller, but I was in the console team, and we didn't do a lot of that in the early days. I do recall some clear controllers, but they were random samples, I think there were even some that were painted silver on the inside, looked hideous. We didn't like the crystal clear controllers as much as the console since the console had the EMI shield that actually made it look a ton better. Could not have asked for a better fortunate coincident than that. If the EMI shield had been made out of cheaper material or non existent, the clear special editions would have never happened. Different Colored Jewels (http://www.assemblergames.com/forum...and-then-some)&p=713560&viewfull=1#post713560) What became the regular jewel (green) was a nightmare to produce. The factory that started production was in the middle of nowhere Kentucky (they made logos for GM cars), and was one of the worst factories in the world I have been in, and I've been in a lot. They had a paint roller that a tray of jewels went under supposedly 10 times to get the color deep and opaque enough. It was on a conveyer belt that was arranged in 4 sections in a square pattern, so the jewels just kept going around in a circle. When we went to audit the place, we asked the GM and operator, how do you keep track of how many times it goes through the paint roller, the GM just responded "she just knows" in a deep souther drawl. That became on of our war cries throughout the program. The factory later went bankrupt since they could only ship about 30% of what they could produce due to low quality - our demand was 300K units per week... just think about that for a moment... You are the first person in the world to ever notice this. ;-)
THAAAAAAAAAAANK YOU BORMAN! About the jewels I think I had some photos of that said production, I'm sure if you google for it, it's on someone's personal blog. Contacted for permission to use and heard nothing. Wonder if that's the same factory mm206 was talking about?
Is there any history for the two kinds of buttons on Malaysian vs. Chinese S controllers? I think that's the difference anyway.
What do you mean two kinds of buttons? You mean the indent vs not? The indented ones were for the first model sold in Japan. A limited release using the Japanese styling was does in a few territories, I know that the US had a limited edition controller which I bought, and Australia had it as well in various pack-ins (Hex is the expert on the Aussie releases). If I had to guess, these additional releases were done as a way of using up Japanese parts, but I havent confirmed that yet so don't quote me
Beast Entertainment Pack had the standard Japanese controller S as a "limited edition" controller. Part numbers are 1:1 so there was no difference between the two.
It makes sense to have some of the controllers come back to the US to use up parts. But why have a difference in buttons in the first place? We were told the a lot of the special edition consoles did some traveling around the world, with consistent standards of quality. The variance seems intentional to me. I suppose it's as intentional as the difference in jewels. Still curious as ever, though!
