What you’re looking at here is a mountain of Xbox One prototypes. The new console has been years in the making, so you had to figure the 30-person team behind its invisible design went through a lot of iterations. But this assortment of funky shapes is still surprisingly varied — and they’re just a fraction of the more than 200 designs Microsoft tried before settling on the current look.
Polygon reports that the image above was shown off by Xbox creative director Carl Ledbetter today at the Worldwide Partner Conference. The goal, he said, was to make the new console’s design approachable while still conveying that you were looking at a work of craftsmanship. And that was, you know, a box. [WPC via Polygon via Microsoft News]