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The Diversion

The story of the Miami man who received an Xbox One prototype far ahead of launch

Business Insider has recently reported of a Miami man who received a prototype Xbox One far ahead of its availability.

Twenty-five year-old Jia Li ordered a $500 laptop back in March 2013, but instead received the prototype console wrapped in a fair amount of security tape.

As you can see above, the console came in white, and apart from the zebra tape, looked remarkably similar to the finished product. While the console didn’t come with a Kinect or controller, it did have AV cables and a power brick. Naturally, Li plugged it in.

kryptos

Rather than a standard boot up screen, Li’s prototype displayed the “Kryptos” screen shown above. That was just one of the codenames of the Xbox One itself.

In the end, Li did the right thing and got in touch with Microsoft. Eight months ahead of the Xbox One’s launch — and two ahead of its reveal — Microsoft picked up the prototype later in March 2013. Li received the laptop he ordered, alongside a new Xbox 360 and Kinect.

Fair deal?

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Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.