First-ever transparent Xbox One S design is 'Minecraft'-themed
The Xbox One S is getting a limited-edition Minecraft makeover, and it's going up for pre-order right now.
The Xbox One S Minecraft Limited Edition Bundle, announced today, reimagines the Xbox One S (a step up from the original Xbox One) as the iconic grass block from Minecraft and the controller as an enemy Creeper. Pre-orders are up now, but be warned: it's the most limited edition product the Xbox team has made, thanks to its status as apparently the most complex console the Xbox team has created.
Xbox's Monique Chatterjee and Mojang's Lydia Winters were both involved with the bundle's design process and shed some light into just how much work went into the console and controller.
Seen in the video above, the back of the console is clear (the first Xbox One console to have a clear case, Chatterjee said) with red stone circuitry that runs both inside and outside the console. This red stone design is a reference to the game's use of red stone to power certain objects (and is used in intricate engineering setups in-game).
The addition of the red stone on the console is both Winters's and Chatterjee's favorite design element of the Minecraft Bundle, although Winters admitted that it was a tough call.
"It's like asking what part of your child you like the most," she said with a laugh.
"Everything has to be completely spot-on to pull off the Minecraft quality and aesthetic"
Figuring out the design alone took the team a few months, and then building that design into a physical product added another three or four months of work. The team flew back and forth between Sweden (Mojang's headquarters) and Redmond, Washington (Microsoft's headquarters) several times throughout the process, Chatterjee said.
Although the red stone design may seem like it'd be the hardest part of the production process, Chatterjee said the large square pixels that make up the grass block facade gave them the most difficulty because they are individually screen printed on.
"This is done by hand," Chatterjee said. "Each color is a separate screen. The pixels are so simple but actually the alignment of them has to be totally perfect... Everything has to be completely spot-on to pull off the Minecraft quality and aesthetic."
The pixels on the rounded face of the Creeper controller also took a lot of work to make them actually look like squares. The controller swaps the A, B, X, and Y button font into a more pixelated font and includes a block of TNT on its underside.
On top of all these obvious design details, Minecraft fans can look forward to finding some hidden easter eggs (sorry, the design team refused to tell me what they are).
One sort-of easter egg isn't actually a part of this bundle but came out of the same project: a pig controller. The teams came up with the idea during the design process and just couldn't let it die on the cutting room floor.
The pig controller (which has a unique, extra-smooth body), will be made available as a standalone product at a later date.
If you manage to get a pre-order in for the Xbox One S Minecraft Limited Edition Bundle, your order will ship out around Oct. 3.
