Xbox/Startup Screens

Credits

Captures by
SubparMario63

Editions by
IAmJefferson, mr3urious and McDonald's1

Video captures courtesy of
testdrive426, Digital media resources, TRGO, SNKTarma04, JustAnyone, The Archiving b0B, Daniel, Kevin Vincos, darvolt, and Xbox

1st Logo (April 2001)

Logo: On a black background, we see a large green, pointy X facing towards the screen, Below it is "XBOX", also in green, which then shines and two lines make it black and turns green again. After the animation ends, "XBOX" cuts out and the green X fades out.

Technique: Simple CGI animation.

Music/Sounds: None

Availability: Ultra rare, it can only be seen on early prototype Xbox dashboards. This startup is known as "ani.bin", with no leftovers of it in the Xbox code. The next startup is known as "ani2.bin" in the code.

2nd Logo (November 15, 2001-March 2, 2009)

• 
  Original variant
• 
  Error variant
• 
  Xbox Live variant

Logo: We see a green blob forming in a green and black laboratory. It keeps moving and moving, but everything zooms out in green light and we see the same green, X as before. Below it is "XBOX" in the same color and font as the previous logo, In a few seconds, the 1987-2012 Microsoft logo appears on the bottom.

Variants:

• Apparently, in late development, the logo was originally going to respond to button inputs of A, B, X, Y, Black, White, and the left stick. These inputs would control animation speed, fog, shadows, camera position, intensity of the blob, and shields. In the final build of the kernel, the library for handling controller input is not loaded on boot, so this code (and therefore the interactivity) is unused.
• In later prototype Xbox dashboards, a section of shields spin around the blob, the animation is slightly slower and the 1987-2012 Microsoft logo appears late and is in green
• An alternative version can be seen if an original Xbox game is inserted into a DVD/Blu-ray player (or any PC or gaming system that plays DVDs or Blu-rays, like the PS2/PS3 for example). We see an exploding green flash with green dots and they all form a green bubble circle. It zooms in when we see bacteria-like things, and then green flash zooms in the Xbox logo without the "X". It shines exactly like the previous logo, and in a few seconds, it explodes. After that, it displays "This is an Xbox game disc. Please put it in your Xbox to start playing." and says it in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. The Xbox 360 has a similar animation, albeit with Portuguese, Korean, and Traditional Chinese added in.
• On Dashboard version 4920, an animated logo will appear when "Xbox LIVE" is selected on the dashboard.
• A still version with a white background is seen when you play an Xbox game on an Xbox 360.
• When playing an Xbox game on an Xbox One or an Xbox Series X or S, the Microsoft logo is removed, presumably because they changed their logo since then.

Technique: 3D animation, which is rendered in real-time. The alternative version uses CGI. None for the still version. In the original, it's 30fps. But when the logo is being revealed, it switches to 60fps. When running on Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S, the entire logo is 60fps.

Music/Sounds: Some deep synth bass notes with thunderclaps, followed by a high-pitched synthesized tune. It was composed by Brian Schmidt, who is known for composing music for pinball and video games.

Music/Sounds Variants:

• The alternative version had a synthesized rock tune backed by cacophonies of an electric guitar, a synthesized EDM-esque riser, a repeating series of overly-saturated snippets of a man saying the name of the console, and an exploding sound with quiet beeps in the background in the end.
• The still version is silent.

Availability: Common. It appears as the start-up on all models of the original Xbox console, which can be found for cheap on many auction sites or thrift stores (such as Goodwill or The Salvation Army). Also appears when playing an Xbox game on an Xbox One or Xbox Series console. Ultra rare for the Xbox Live and the "shields" variants, since the former only appears on consoles running the dashboard version "4920" and the latter appears in later prototype Xbox dashboards.

Legacy: This is a very nostalgic logo among gamers.

Xbox

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