Xbox 360 Exposed: First Genuine Pictures

Full-size images of the next Xbox leaked, confirming many previously rumoured features and slightly ruining the OurColony viral campaign.

It was bound to happen. It happened with the first Xbox and now Microsoft's next-generation gaming machine has been exposed before its official planned unveiling - May 12 on MTV.

What you're looking at are real pictures of Xbox 360, leaked to online news sources late last night and confirmed by various insiders and publishing contacts as the real deal. First, the front perspective of the machine was leaked, before a side view appeared just hours later.

Comparing the images to one recently released by the unofficially official viral marketing site OurColony.net leaves no doubt as to the authenticity of the pics.

The first of two leaked images confirms the 360 moniker, inhaled design, mysteriously oversized power button, and almost certainly proves wireless controllers are standard.

We will say however that while we're certain these are genuine images, there is still a chance that minor modifications will be made before the machine's final retail debut - in the same way that minor changes were made to systems like Dreamcast, PSP and DS from their initial designs.

Xbox 360's sleek and uncluttered design is arguably one of the finest looking home consoles to date. Unquestionably out-classing the original Xbox design, 360's casing boasts a deceptively simple style that betrays the inevitably monstrous capability of the hardware inside.

A front-loading disc tray is emblazoned with the Xbox 360 logo - yet another confirmation of the machine's final name - and revealing the slimmed-down font style that we first saw at the end of the MTV Trailer.

The second shot reveals a removable storage unit and an apparently plain 'X'-less top.

An oversized power button is said to do more than merely indicate the power status of the machine, although for the time being this is something nose-tappers are keeping close to their chests. Two memory card slots and an infrared receiver appear below the disc drive, while the lack of any controller ports almost certainly confirms the expected standard of wireless controllers.

The unit can be stood on its right-hand side, it would seem. One clue is the direction of the 'power' and 'disc eject' symbols (although mysteriously the latter symbol faces different directions in these two shots), while the second picture reveals that the left side of the unit hosts what looks certain to be the long-rumoured removable hard drive.

This image was recently released by the Ourcolony viral site, and is identical to the unit's left side shown in shot two, albeit with no storage apparent - perhaps it's the 'bay filler' that comes with the basic Xbox 360 package?

This apparently removable unit on the side features what appears to be an LCD display showing the drive's capacity, in this case 40GB. We can't be sure whether the storage unit is actually a hard disc or some other kind of device, there was never any doubt that Xbox 360 would be offering the kind of advanced media delivery capabilities that forty-odd jigabytes of zeros and ones will allow.

A mysterious 'door' on the right is present and remains, um, mysterious for the time being. Meanwhile the overall "inhaled" shape of the machine that had been suggested in several previous reports looks pretty nice, and the top of the machine seems to be just plain with no 'X' shape, judging by picture two which gives a glimpse at the top of the unit.

Kikizo will be following everything Xbox 360 obsessively, so stay with us as we get closer to the official May 12 unveiling on MTV, before the full, unabridged spectacle that will follow at Microsoft's Pre-E3 conference on May 16.

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com