One lucky Xbox fan came across an unexpected find online when they stumbled across several Halo-themed prototype controllers for the Xbox One for sale, sharing a picture of the collection for others to admire. Master Chief’s latest outing on PC and consoles recently got an injection of new content with the launch of Halo Infinite’s Season 3: Echoes Within earlier this month.
Beginning life as a never-released real-time strategy game for the Mac before eventually morphing into one of the most recognizable first-person shooter franchises in gaming, Microsoft’s Halo series has become inextricably linked with the company’s Xbox consoles over the past 22 years. The original Halo: Combat Evolved was released alongside Microsoft’s first foray into console hardware, the Xbox, and the franchise has made appearances on every Microsoft console since. The series’ most recent entry, 2021’s Halo Infinite, was included as part of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Service and made the game’s multiplayer component free for all players for the first time.
A new picture posted to the r/Xbox subreddit serves as a perfect example of how tightly intertwined the Halo franchise has become with Microsoft’s Xbox brand. The pictures, posted by Reddit user dretro33, show two sets of prototype controllers for the Xbox One that feature stunning, Halo-themed designs. The first set of Xbox One controllers features a dark green palette reminiscent of Master Chief’s armor with gold highlights on the D-pads, while the second pair’s silver and blue color scheme appears to be inspired by secondary protagonist Locke from the Xbox One-exclusive Halo 5: Guardians.
Redditors responding to photos of the collection of prototype controllers were impressed with dretro33’s finds, with several commenters sharing that they had bought the release version of the Halo-themed controllers. Responding to one Redditor who was curious about how they came to own the unique collectibles, dretro33 replied that they live in Washington where Microsoft is headquartered, and they find “cool Microsoft stuff” for sale online fairly often. Some replies questioned whether the controllers were really prototypes rather than commercially released versions, though it was quickly pointed out that the photos showed a distinctive “Prototype” marking inside the controllers’ battery compartments.
While the physical experience of playing with these unique prototypes would be no different than with any other controller, their relative rarity makes them a unique and collectible part of Halo and Xbox history. Hopefully, dretro33 won’t find them suffering from the dreaded Xbox controller drift problem if they ever decide to bust them out for some 4-player Halo co-op action, though.
Source: Reddit