The Xbox 360 reveal was 20 years ago and is a time capsule from a world where Elijah Wood roamed free, MTV was still cool, and giant tech companies paid Pimp My Ride to make hideous custom consoles

2025-05-16 13:54:00
www.pcgamer.com

This week marked 20 years since the reveal of the Xbox 360, an anniversary noted by Kotaku, and as someone old enough to remember getting hyped for this thing, I had to watch it.

The reveal took place in 2005, and is basically a collection of signifiers that we’re back in 2005: The video (embedded below) opens with an iPod ad featuring the Gorillaz, and then we get into the real business of Elijah Wood hyping up the console alongside appearances from The Killers and Pimp My Ride.

There’s a brief segment outlining some gaming history, in which Microsoft says gaming began in 1972 with Pong: incorrect but who’s going to be pedantic when we’ve got Frodo and The Killers waiting.

“You guys know how big gaming is,” says Elijah Wood, “and now the time has come, you’ve waited long enough… I give you the future of gaming!”

The future of gaming is a blonde woman sashaying through the crowd with a messenger bag, who gets to a circular stage, pulls the Xbox 360 out, and whacks it on a plinth. As our US EIC Tyler Wilde put it while we were talking about the reveal: “I feel like at any other time, a cheap grey nylon messenger bag would not be the way to express ‘cutting edge new tech inside,’ but in 2005 it was.”

After placing the console, the woman presses the little button, it lights up despite not being plugged in, then we get a short clip revealing the name before launching straight into The Killers and Mr Brightside.

Following the performance, Elijah Wood asks rapper Lil Jon if he’s excited for the new console. “Yeah I’m looking forward to getting a free one tonight” is the unbeatable response.

Then Tony Hawk pops up to shout-out Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland before a quick sizzle reel of Need for Speed and Madden.

In perhaps the most ’00s moment of all, rapper and presenter Sway introduces Ryan and Mad Mike from Pimp My Ride, and we get a clip of them pimping out an OG Xbox, which was never a looker anyway but they manage to make it even more impressively hideous. This segment has one of the most genuinely interesting moments of the whole reveal however, as Sway visits Microsoft HQ and we get to see a load of prototype designs for the Xbox 360 chassis (timestamp).

They all make a big deal of the light ring on front of the console, which is nice for lovers of schadenfreude, before Xbox’s J Allard is introduced with the unfortunate title of “Lord of the Ring.” Quite.

This section does show how forward-thinking the Xbox design team was. Allard talks Sway through some of the things this console can do, showing off the marketplace and customisable avatars, talking about digital downloads and DLC (and yes there’s even a mention of microtransactions). The Xbox was online too, of course, but the 360’s embryonic marketplace and friends ecosystem was basically the direction all consoles would end up taking.

There’s a documentary going behind-the-scenes on Perfect Dark Zero, before we’re briefly back with Frodo and The Killers play us out with Smile Like You Mean It. By this point, everything on the 2005 bingo card feels like it’s been ticked-off. Nothing could really make me feel 20 years old again, but for 20 minutes this almost did.

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