Releases in the video game industry are just the tip of an iceberg that hides countless stories with events and decisions that, in one way or another, changed the final outcomes, and this certainly applies to consoles as well. Recently, the creator of the first Xbox revealed a story about the process that led to naming Microsoft's first console.
Xbox Creator Reveals Details About Console Name
For many, it is a well-known fact that Xbox was named after the development process involving DirectX; however, this was not a definitive decision and was initially considered an informal designation. This was revealed by Seamus Blackley, the console's creator, who, in an interview with Time Extension, shared details about how the console got its name, logo, and identifying color.
Why is it called Xbox, and why is its official color green?
According to Blackley, the connection between the X and the figure of a "Box" was only considered preliminarily because they expected the department in charge to give the console a proper name: "The Xbox logo is tied to the name of the platform, which comes from the fact that we were internally launching it as a hardware specification optimized for DirectX. So, we were going to make a box, which is what people call a machine or a system. A box for DirectX. So, it was the DirectX box. And eventually, we called it Xbox assuming that there would be a better name at some point."
However, the marketing area failed and even disappointed the hardware team: "They were absolute garbage," so they stuck with the name Xbox, which eventually became official.
Next up was the logo and color combination. According to Seamus Blackley, the logical step was to design an X since they already had the name, but they needed to add color. One of his colleagues had a set of markers, but most of them had been stolen from the office, leaving only blues and greens: "All the colors had been stolen, and all that was left was basically greens and some blues. We couldn't have blue because PlayStation was blue, so we started drawing in green and stuck with it. So, we had this name, Xbox, and the color green."
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