At the 2013 Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft showed off a number of the Xbox One's abandoned prototypes.

Polygon posted the images seen above and in our gallery online. Microsoft's Carl Ledbetter presented the Xbox One's assorted prototypes at the conference. When the Xbox One was in its initial creative stages, a team of 30 started sketching and crafting possible looks for the device and testing their aesthetics by placing them in living rooms.

Ledbetter said that while the Xbox One hardware saw many iterations, more than 200 prototypes were created for the console's controller. Ledbetter said, "We found that, when people put these in their hands, could tell the difference between a 10th of a millimeter in size,"

[Source: Polygon]

Our Take
It's always fascinating to see how things change through development, whether it's hardware like this, or even with things that are a little bit more abstract, like story direction in a film or video game. Getting a peek into the process is always welcome and interesting. I have to ask though, what was the one designer thinking with that bizarre cube within a cube on the left side of the above image? There's also that one that sort of looks like the Treyarch logo on the right. I'm sure Activision would have liked that design.